The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday busted a rigging racket during National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) 2022 for undergraduate medical courses conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA) and arrested eight members including the kingpin from Delhi and Haryana.
NEET UG-2022 was conducted on July 17 (Sunday) in offline mode between 2 pm and 5.20 pm.
Expert paper solvers impersonated students and wrote answer sheets in exchange of huge sums and was spread across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Haryana.
According to news agency ANI, one Sushil Ranjan, a resident of Delhi, Brij Mohan Singh, Pappu, Uma Shankar Gupta and unidentified others were involved in arranging solvers who will impersonate themselves as real candidates in the said exam at several exam centres of Delhi and Haryana. The impersonators were to appear in the NEET UG Exam, 2022 in place of actual candidates and give the exam in lieu of large sums of money.
It was revealed that the user IDs and passwords of the candidates appearing for the examination have been collected by the above-mentioned suspect persons and their associates and necessary modifications have been made for getting desired examination centres as planned by them. They also use the process of mixing/morphing photographs to facilitate the use of proxy candidates for appearing in the examination. Copies of the Identity of candidates are being collected for the purpose of making forged IDs.
Each seat cost Rs 20 lakh, of which 5 lakh was given to the person who impersonated the student and solves the NEET question paper, according to NDTV report.
"All the suspect persons and unknown others were indulged in the use of fraudulent means in NEET UG-2022 exam being conducted on July 17 thereby cheating the NTA, genuine meritorious candidates and the general public at large. An FIR has been registered and eight persons have been arrested," said a senior CBI official.
To stop cheating, the authorities have tightened security checks for NEET, where wallets, handbags, belts, caps, jewellery, shoes and heels are banned in the exam hall. Candidates are also not allowed to carry any stationery.
(with agency inputs)
