THE IMITATION GAME

Fresh arrests reveal the growing trend of paid proxies taking medical or engineering entrance exams as unscrupulous agents seek out desperate students or their parents looking for a short-cut to admission in highly competitive courses

- AMITABH SRIVASTAVA

There was not even a moment’s hesitation when Sabita (name chan­ged), 17, was asked to show her Aadhaar and admit cards at the St Francis Xavier’s School in Varanasi. It was September 12, 2021, and the CBSE-affiliated school, located in the Sona Talab area of the temple city in Uttar Pradesh, was serving as one of the centres for the year’s NEET or National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical admissions. Sabita was given entry, and allowed to write the exam.

It was only when she came out three hours later that police inspector Anjani Kumar Pandey stepped up to check on a few more details. Like where she took her Class 12 examination from. What was the name of her school principal? What could she tell them about Tripura, where she was from? How many rooms did her house have?

Three minutes into the interrogation and Sabita’s façade crumbled. She was actually Julie Kumari from Patna, a second-year dental surgery student at the Banaras Hindu University. She had agreed to appear for the exam in place of Sabita for Rs 5 lakh, of which her mother Babita had already collected Rs 50,000 in advance. Both Julie and her mother, who was also at the exam centre while her daughter was writing the exam, were arrested. A fake Aadhaar card, NEET admit card, photographs, two mobile phones and other documents were also recovered from the duo. A day later, the police nabbed one Osama Shahid, 31, a final-year medical student at the King George’s Medical University (KGMU) in Lucknow.