The Patna Police busted an inter-state gang from Bihar and UP which provided 150 proxy candidates for appearing in the Staff Selection Commission-2018 examination, conducted in February and March.
The SSC exam is a prerequisite for those applying to pots of constables in the Assam Rifles, the NIA and other Central paramilitary forces.
Six members of the gang were apprehended on Wednesday during routine checking at the Phulwarisharif Police station, police officials said.
The six were travelling in a SUV and tried to speed past the checkpost but the police chased them down.
The accused were identified as Dhiraj Kumar Singh and Rohit Kumar from Munger, Shiv Kant and Sunil Kumar from Bhagalpur, Ankur Raj from Madhepura and Manohar Kumar, they said.
Rs 9.5 lakh in cash and 49 admit cards were recovered from the accused. Most admit cards were of those candidates belonging to Uttar Pradesh, said police officials. The six were returning after collecting money from Varanasi and Allahabad.
According to officials familiar with the investigation, once the accused got details of candidates, they would first look for scholars who held even a slight resemblance to them to send as a proxy.
Professionals would then replace the photographs on the admit cards with those of the proxy writers, who would fill out the forms and use their thumb impressions only.
Each proxy writer would get Rs 15,000 for attempting the paper. If the candidate got through, then he would pay the gang Rs 4-5 lakh, of which, the proxy writer would make 10-15%, said the official.
Officials said Dhiraj, a resident of Bariyarpur who is a graduate and had been selected for the post of sub-inspector with Jharkhand Police eight years ago, was the mastermind of the operation.
Dhiraj first started earning as working as a proxy scholar and later forged an inter-state gang working across UP and Bihar… There could be some 150 people in the gang, said Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Garima Malik.
A police official at the Phulwarisharif police station said during questioning, Dhiraj had also revealed named several other associates who used their bank accounts of their wives for collecting money from candidates.
The gang had its members in several districts of UP to provide proxy scholars for SSC, railways and bank PO examination, said the official, adding that they were now probing for details of the bank accounts used by the gang.
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