The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested eight people, including the suspected mastermind and paper solvers, who allegedly impersonated real candidates to help them in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) examination for undergraduate medical courses, people familiar with the development said on Monday.
The federal agency on Sunday registered a first information report (FIR) after receiving reliable information that several people conspired to arrange solvers to impersonate real candidates in the NEET exam conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA) at several centres in Delhi and Haryana on Sunday.
CBI sleuths conducted multiple raids in Delhi and Haryana on Monday and arrested the eight accused, including mastermind Sushil Ranjan and paper solvers, a senior officer said.
The impersonators appeared in the NEET UG Exam-2022 in place of real candidates in lieu of huge money, the FIR stated.
“The user IDs and passwords of the candidates appearing for the examination were collected by the suspects and their associates and necessary modifications were made for getting desired examination centres as planned by them,” said a CBI officer, requesting anonymity. “They also used the process of mixing/morphing photographs to facilitate use of proxy candidates for appearing in the examination. Copies of identity cards of candidates were collected for the purpose of making forged ID cards.”
The paper solvers, who appeared as proxy candidates, arrived in Delhi on Saturday and Sunday and stayed in some hotels in the Capital, the CBI said in the FIR, a copy of which HT has seen.
{{/usCountry}}The paper solvers, who appeared as proxy candidates, arrived in Delhi on Saturday and Sunday and stayed in some hotels in the Capital, the CBI said in the FIR, a copy of which HT has seen.
{{/usCountry}}Besides mastermind Sushil Ranjan, CBI has also named Brij Mohan Singh, Pappu, and Uma Shankar Gupta in its FIR. The alleged paper solvers — Nidhi, Krishna Shankar Yogi, Sunny Ranjan, Raghunandan, Jeepu Lal, Hemendra and Bharat Singh — have also been named in the FIR, said a senior CBI officer.
Last year, too, CBI busted a similar racket during the NEET exam in which a consultancy from Nagpur was offering proxies to the candidates appearing for the exam.