From dummy candidates at NEET- UG to an alleged fraud at the JEE Mains test, admissions from the backdoor have become increasingly prevalent in the education sector in India.
Lets's take a look at the recent scams that have taken place and the developments so far.
REET
The Rajasthan Police earlier this week arrested four members of a gang for an alleged bid to make dummy candidates write a state eligibility exam for teachers, which is scheduled for Sunday.
The state government has made extensive arrangements for the Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET), in which over 16 lakh candidates are set to appear at around 4,000 centres in the state.Apart from deploying measures to check copying, the government is providing free travel facility to the candidates.
According to police, the four people were srrested with Rs 5.60 lakh in cash in the state's Dausa.Chats and an audio recording related to the examination have been recovered while their mobile phones are being checked, Dausa SP Anil Kumar Beniwal said.
He said that during interrogation, the accused revealed about crores of rupees taken from several candidates for different competitive examinations. Role of some coaching institutes and libraries has come to the fore, he added.The arrested have been identified as Sumer Meena (35), Dashrath Singh Meena (30), Ramesh Meena (25) and Karan Singh Meena (24).
NEET
The CBI recently found that a Nagpur-based consultancy was offering proxies to appear in place of candidates for the NEET UG 2021 exam. According to the CBI, the consultancy was charging upto Rs 50 lakh per candidate.
Sources from the CBI said that a coaching centre called 'RK Education Career Guidance' and its director Parimal Kotpalliwar have been named in the scam.
Meanwhile in a separate incident, UP police earlier busted a 10-member gang which was engaged in helping financially sound students crack the NEET exam with the help of dummy candidates who were made to take the test in their place by editing the pictures of the real candidates on admit cards.
Surprisingly, these accused confirmed to police officials that they too were 'working hard' since the last one year to zero in on the dummy candidates. It was a hard task to find such candidates who could take the test and help the real candidates crack the exam, they revealed during interrogation.
The police busted the 10-member gang a few hours before the start of the NEET exam.
The police received a tip-off that Anil Nimawat and Shardul were working to make dummy candidates take the test by accepting a large amount of money from the real candidates.
When the police checked the mobile phone of Anil, they were stunned to find the pictures, Aadhar and chat details with money transactions on the same. Police also figured out a detailed list of 15 names and other bank details and hence started arresting the accused persons.
The dummy candidates were convinced to take the test and were given a big amount of money in return.
The Varanasi police identified the alleged mastermind behind the scam. As per the commissioner, the mastermind is identified as 'PK' is Nilesh Singh and is allegedly on the run along with his family.
JEE Scam
The online examination system for admission in JEE (Main) conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) came under scanner after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested seven persons of a private consultancy firm for charging up to Rs 15 lakh per candidate to facilitate admissions in top engineering colleges.
Four more arrests were made later which included a peon and an assistant professor, CBI officials said.
"The CBI has seized the documents and going through bank account details of this consultancy to get details of other persons involved in the scam. We are also getting details of other suspicious exam centres from NTA. We also got some clues that this consultancy firm has made some transactions through the 'Hawala' Route," an official said.
Sources also informed that the modus operandi adopted by the accused persons was that "they arranged a solver sitting at a remote location for solving the questions which were displayed on the computer terminal allotted to the candidate at the examination centre in connivance with the Centre's authorities." "The Centre supervisor who had access to the computer network was also a part of the fraudulent act and the solver got access to the system being used by the candidate by using a remote access software. The candidates were directed to pretend that they are operating the computer by keeping their hand on a mouse and making calculations on a sheet so that nothing adverse was recorded on cameras installed at the centre whereas the questions were solved by solvers hired by the accused," they said.
