NEET paper solver gang busted in Delhi, four held

NEW DELHI: Four people including two MBBS students were arrested for allegedly running a paper solver gang for NEET exams here, police said on Saturday. The matter came to the fore on May 5 when a student's biometric data was mismatched during the NEET exam at Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan Mehta Vidyalaya located in Tilak Marg area, police said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (New Delhi) Devesh Kumar Mahla said the two proxy students Sumit Mandoliya and Krishan Kesarwani, were caught from the centre.

Given the seriousness of the offence, the case was transferred to the Special Staff of New Delhi District and a dedicated team led by Inspector Sanjay Kumar Gupta was formed to conduct the investigations, the DCP said.

During sustained interrogation, Sumit Mandoliya and Krishan Kesarwani, both MBBS students, revealed the names of their handlers -- Prabhat Kumar, 27, and Kishor Lal, 37 -- who were nabbed from a hotel in Noida on Friday. The officer said Kumar and Lal are residents of Rajasthan and Bihar, respectively.

The duo, who works as medical school admissions consultants, would charge the amount of Rs 20 to 25 Rs lakhs from the aspirants to provide them proxy students for the NEET exams. They would also mix the photos of the proxy and original students to create another photo digitally to paste on the form.

This helped them to mislead the examiners, the officer said. Another officer said, that Mandoliya and Kesarwani, hailing from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, respectively, are MBBS students from different colleges. Mandoliya is a second-year MBBS student at a Medical College in West Bengal and Kesarwani is a first-year student of MBBS at a Medical College in Uttarakhand, he said.

The police have recovered four mobile phones and one Kia Seltos car from their possession. The police said the accused were further interrogated to know their involvement in previous exams. Investigation into the matter is underway.