A candidate for the Railway Recruitment Board RCC Level-1 examination held in Vadodara allegedly hired a “dummy candidate” to appear for the test on his behalf and peeled off the skin of his left thumb to ensure that the hired person could clear the biometric verifications, police said.
The candidate, identified as as Manish Kumar Shambunath (26) and the person he hired, Rajyaguru Gupta (22) — both natives of Bihar — were arrested by the Laxmipura police and a local court Wednesday remanded them in three-day police custody.
According to police, the invigilator at the exam centre found out about the impersonation when he used a sanitiser to clean the left thumb of the dummy candidate and the layer of the skin came undone.
In the FIR lodged at Laxmipura police station, Operation Executive of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the agency conducting the exam, which was scheduled for August 22, has said that a total of 645 candidates appeared for the exam from the TCS centre.
“In the third shift of the examination on August 22, scheduled from 5 to 6.30 pm, the candidates were taken to the fourth floor where they are allotted their labs and put through biometric verification of Aadhar card data, by using the left thumb impression on a biometric sequencing device…”
The FIR states that in the second round of biometric verification, Manish Kumar’s thumb impression could not be recorded after two attempts, which is when the invigilator Akhilendrasinh grew suspicious.
“Akhilendrasinh used a sanitiser to clean the thumb in order to retry the verification. He then discovered that the person had a layer of skin stuck onto his thumb, which is why the second biometric verification could not be completed despite multiple attempts,” the FIR added.
The examination officials then called the police control room and handed over Gupta to the police, where Gupta, a resident of Beladi village in Munger taluka of Bihar, confessed that he was hired by Kumar as a “dummy candidate” to appear for the railway recruitment exam.
Police Inspector Pooja Tiwari of Laxmipura police station said, “The accused have told us that on August 19, Manish Kumar sliced off a thick layer of the skin of his left thumb. Along with Gupta, he boarded a train to Vadodara to arrive at the examination centre. They had carried the skin with Kumar’s fingerprint in a polythene bag… We are yet to question them if they had treated it with any chemical so that it could remain intact.”
Tiwari said that Kumar had got first aid treatment in Bihar for the self-inflicted avulsion injury and added that there could be an intermediary involved in the case.
“We are yet to begin questioning the accused as the court has given us custody late on Wednesday evening… From their primary questioning after their arrest on Tuesday night, we suspect that there are intermediaries involved, who have been using this modus operandi for cheating in other examinations… While it was Kumar’s first attempt at the exam, the dummy candidate may have appeared for other candidates earlier,” he added.
The Laxmipura police booked the accused under Indian Penal Code Sections for punishment for cheating by personation (419), making of a false document in the name of a fictitious person, intending it to be believed that the document was made by a real person (464), forgery (465), forgery for purpose of cheating 468, and criminal conspiracy [120(B)] as well as the Information Technology Act, 2000.