The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested eight persons, including the alleged mastermind behind the racket, on the charge of mass rigging in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) held on Sunday for admissions in undergraduate medical courses.
Based on the information that proxies were being provided to appear in place of several candidates in the examination conducted by the National Testing Agency to solve the question papers, the agency registered a case against 11 accused persons.
Subsequently, multiple teams raided examination centres and other places. The alleged mastermind, Sushil Ranjan, was arrested along with one Nidhi from Havelock Square in Delhi. Raghunandan was picked up from Patparganj and Saurav from Shakurpur, while Bharat Singh was arrested from Safdarjung Hospital’s hostel in Delhi. Accused Krishna Shankar Yogi and Sunny Ranjan were traced to another centre in Faridabad Sector-8 and Jeepu Lal was arrested in Ballabhgarh, Haryana.
The agency alleged that Ranjan and his associates were involved in arranging proxies for several candidates in Delhi and Haryana.
“The accused persons collected the user IDs and passwords of certain candidates appearing for the examination and made necessary modifications to get allotted the desired examination centres. They also morphed the candidate’s photographs to ensure that the proxies were not caught. Copies of the identity cards of such candidates were being collected for the purpose of making forged ones,” an agency official said, adding that further investigations might lead to more arrests.
In September 2021, the CBI unearthed a similar racket involving a Nagpur-based education consultancy firm that offered proxies for a commission of up to ₹50 lakh per candidate. The firm used to collect post-dated cheques and mark sheets of such candidates as security from the parents.
Following the same modus operandi, the accused would collect the user IDs and passwords of the candidates and make the required modifications to get the examination centres of their choice.
