Bhubaneswar: In a major breakthrough on the eve of the NEET-UG 2025, the Special Crime Unit (SCU) of Commissionerate Police Saturday arrested four conduits of an interstate racket who were allegedly duping medical education aspirants with a promise to secure their admission in top private colleges by making dummy candidates appear for the test.
Addressing a presser to announce the detection, twin city police commissioner Suresh Dev Datta Singh said the activities of the racket spanned across three states – Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar.
Two four-wheelers, documents pertaining to the purchase of two plots of land in Arugul, a forged NRI certificate, and three bank cheques totalling `90 lakh have been seized from the foursome following their arrest.
Singh identified the arrested as Priyadarshi Kumar, Arvind Kumar, Sunil Samantray and Rudra Narayan Behera. While Priyadarshi and Arvind are natives of Jharkhand and Bihar, respectively, Sunil and Rudra are from Odisha. The racket has been active for quite some time, he said.
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Giving details of the racket’s modus operandi, Singh said, “The hoodlums, with help from a few local scouts, would procure the identification details of NEET aspirants.
Once the admit cards were obtained on the basis of these details, they would share those with dummy candidates, who would sit for the test after forging admit card details.” The commissioner said the syndicate charged each candidate anything between Rs 20-30 lakh for the service.
“The local scouts received Rs 4-5 lakh as remuneration,” he said. The syndicate was busted following a tip-off by a local informer in Jharkhand, leading to the arrest of Priyadarshi and Arvind.
“The Jharkhand Police’s information helped us nab Sunil and Rudra from their hideouts in the City,” Singh added.
PNN
