CBI CARRIES OUT RAIDS AT 19 PLACES OVER JEE EXAM MANIPULATION BID

NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation on Thursday conducted searches at 19 locations across the country after registering a case against a private firm on charges of attempting to manipulate the ongoing JEE (Mains) exams 2021, people familiar with the development said.

CBI spokesperson RC Joshi said the agency has registered a First Information Report (FIR) against Affinity Education Pvt Ltd and its directors, Siddharth Krishna, Vishambhar Mani Tripathi and Govind Varshney on the charges that they, along with their associates posted at the examination centre and others, were manipulating the online examination of JEE (Mains)

HT attempted to reach the company for its comments but there was no response.

The raids coincided with the session 4 JEE (Mains) 2021 exams held on Thursday, the last of the string of tests conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).

Joshi said the accused persons were facilitating aspiring students to get admission to top National Institutes of Technology by solving the question paper of the applicant through remote access from a chosen examination centre in Sonepat (Haryana).

“It was also alleged that the accused used to obtain Xth and XIIth mark sheets, the User IDs, Passwords, and post-dated cheques of aspiring students in different parts of country as security and once admission was done, they used to collect heavy amount ranging from 12-15 Lakh (approx) per candidate,” he said.

The teams carried out raids at 19 places including Delhi and neighbouring districts in the National Capital Region, Pune, Jamshedpur, Indore and Bangalore which led to the recovery of 25 laptops, 7 computers, around 30 post-dated cheques along with voluminous documents.