Lucknow: 'Solver gang' busted for IBPS Clerk Exam 2025; 10 arrested

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow Police on Tuesday busted an inter-state solver gang who had imposters instead of actual candidates take the IBPS Clerk Exam 2025 and arrested 10 accused, officials said. The gang used Artificial Intelligence tools to manipulate the pictures of actual candidates on their admit cards and get up to 70 per cent resemblance to the face of the impersonating thugs, they said.

The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) is an autonomous body created to assist organisations in the selection of personnel at various levels. DCP (Lucknow South) Nipun Agarwal said the gang members were caught by the Bijnor police station team, which was investigating the case.

The police recovered 16 mobile phones, 21 duplicate identity cards, nine Aadhaar cards, seven pen drives, a laptop, a tablet, photographs, fake ID cards and Rs 1.53 lakh in cash from the accused, he told reporters.

The DCP said that among those arrested were Anand Kumar, Gaurav Aditya, Harsh Joshi, Bhagirath Sharma, Mukesh Kumar, Dhananjay Saurabh, Rajeev Nayan Pandey, Ashish Ranjan and Abhishek Kumar. Another accused, Abhishek Kumar, was arrested earlier from Sitamarhi in Bihar, while efforts are on to nab others associated with the racket.

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Impostors appear for recruitment exam

The police said the gang had been operating across several states and was charging candidates huge sums to have imposters appear for recruitment exams in their place. According to Additional DCP (South) Rallapalli Vasanth Kumar, the gang's mastermind, Anand Kumar, arranged for fake candidates to sit in place of real ones.

Using actual Aadhaar and forged admit cards, the imposters entered the examination centres, Kumar said.

He said that the accused used advanced photo editing and artificial intelligence tools such as 'Mixr Grindr' website, 'Remini AI', 'ChatGPT' and 'Fotor' to alter the faces of imposters so that they resembled the real candidates by nearly 70 per cent.

The police said Anand Kumar charged Rs 2 lakh from each candidate, including Rs 20,000 for appearing in the preliminary exam, Rs 1 lakh for the main exam, and another Rs 2 lakh for helping them secure jobs, totalling around Rs 5.2 lakh per person.

The accused have been booked under various sections of the law for forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy, among others, and under provisions of the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024. Further investigation is underway to identify other members of the gang and to trace digital evidence from seized devices, the officials said.