launching a massive crackdown against the solvers helping candidates taking exam for assistant teachers in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, the sleuths of Special Task Force (STF) nabbed a total of 51 miscreants including 34 from lucknow only.
The exam was held at different exam centers in UP on Sunday. The state government had directed the DGP UP to ensure a free and fair exam for the posts of assistant teacher male/female (trained graduate). Subsequently, a meeting with the officials of education department, UPPSC and STF was held on July 26 and the STF was asked to keep a tab on the solvers who may try to penetrate through the exam system.
In lucknow, the sleuths worked on the network of informers and gleaned information about the gangs which were active to tamper the exam. Subsequently, different teams conducted raids and arrested 32 miscreants involved in wrong practice.
The STF studied the modus operandi used by the gang providing solvers to candidates and they came to know from their informers that the miscreants used to get the exam papers leaked using their links in education department, used to get a solver take the exam in place of a candidate at an exam center in connivance with the head of an exam centre. The sleuths were also told that the miscreants used to ask an examinee seeking their services to get connected with a solver though blue tooth, device or they provided a slip of answers to candidates. For a candidate of far flung area, they used to send the answers key on Whatsapp numbers. Besides, the miscreants used to ask a candidate to leave the OMR sheet as blank during the exam and they later got it filled in connivance with the employees of the exam section of the education department.
After having completed the ground work, the sleuths conducted the raids at different places and nabbed the miscreants from A block of Indira Nagar under Ghazipur police station area. Similarly, the field unit of Allahabad nabbed 12 solvers, a field unit of Kanpur nabbed 4 and 1 was by Agra unit of STF during the raids.
The miscreant disclosed that they used to contact the candidates taking the exam though their local network. After the deal was struck, they used to provide the candidates the facility to crack the exam. The gang used to take the original academic documents of the candidates seeking their ‘services’ as guarantee and post dated cheques without the name of cash receiver from them. After a candidate was selected in the exam, they used to ask him to wait till the cash was credited in their favour and used to provide the original academic documents.
Some of the miscreants disclosed that they used to get the exam paper leaked in advance and then they used to call the candidates to assemble at a place where they were asked to cram the answers of the questions. The candidates opting to this ‘service’ had to pay low cash than those opting to other methods to crack the exam.
The brain behind the gang Om Sahai disclosed that he was in the ‘business of fraud’ for a long time. He disclosed that he used to hire the students from Bihar to work as solver for the exam. He had charged Rs 50,000 for each of the solvers for the exam. It surfaced that Om Sahai and his wife Neelam were teacher at different schools in Kaushambi. They had submitted fake certificates to get the job and were terminated from their services after their fraud was exposed.
The STF recovered 64 mobile sets, above Rs 1.25 lakh, huge number of ATM cards, fake documents, several OMR sheets, Aadhaar Cards of different candidates and other documents from the miscreants at the raid in lucknow,Allahabad, Kanpur and Agra.