CBI busts NEET UG cheating racket; 8 people, including mastermind, arrested

NEW DELHI: The CBI has arrested eight people, including the suspected mastermind and paper solvers, allegedly involved in impersonating real candidates to help them in the NEET examination for admissions to undergraduate medical courses, including in AIIMS, officials said. The agency received inputs that several people had entered into a criminal conspiracy to arrange solvers to impersonate candidates in the NEET exam conducted by National Testing Agency (NTA) at several centres in Delhi and Haryana on Sunday, the FIR alleged.

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It was alleged that the impersonators planned to appear in the NEET UG Exam, 2022 held for admissions to undergraduate medical courses in place of actual candidates and take the test in lieu of huge amounts of money. The CBI has alleged that user IDs and passwords of the candidates were collected by the accused, who made necessary modifications for allotment of desired examination centres. "They also use the process of mixing and morphing of photographs to facilitate use of proxy candidates for appearing in the examination," the FIR alleged.

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The CBI arrested mastermind Sushil Ranjan and Nidhi outside the Havelock Square exam centre, New Delhi, while Krishna Shankar Yogi and Sunny Ranjan were caught from an examination centre in Faridabad Sector-8, the officials said. Jeepu Lal was nabbed from the Kundan Colony Ballabhgarh centre and Raghunandan from Senior Secondary School, Patparganj, New Delhi, Bharat Singh from Safdarjung hospital hostel and Saurabh from the centre at the Government Sarvodaya Bal Vidyalaya, Shakurpur, New Delhi, they said.