As many as 10 people were arrested on Sunday, January 23 for alleged malpractice during the 2021 Uttar Pradesh Teacher Eligibility Test (UPTET), which included impersonating candidates, police said. The exam took place on January 23. The exam was previously scheduled for November 28, but had to be canceled due to a paper leak.
Circle Officer (City) Abhay Pandey said one of the proxy candidates was identified as Amarjeet Verma. He was arrested at the Saket Girls Inter College exam center where he acted in place of aspiring Vivek Kumar. Police recovered an electronic device from the suspect.
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Another proxy candidate Vijay Bahadur Saroj, who appeared on the exam in place of Deepak Kumar, was arrested from Prayagraj, the Special Task Force (STF) said. While Pappu Singh alias Arnav Singh, a resident of Vaishali district of Bihar, was arrested in Jaunpur district. Sonu Pal, a member of a solver gang that used to take hefty sums of money from aspirants, was arrested by police in Moradabad.
Three members of a gang of solvers, including a mastermind and a candidate, were arrested in Meerut. The arrested people have been identified as Monu Prajapati, a Baghpat resident who is the mastermind, Anil Kumar who is a candidate and a resident of Bulandshahr, and Raja Tomar, solver, and a resident of Baghpat, the STF said. Sarvjeet Verma from Pratapgarh, Raju Kumar Manjhi from Siwan district in Bihar and Dinesh Chandra Singh, Fatehpur, who demanded huge sums of money from UPTET 2021 aspirants to provide them with solvers were arrested from Prayagraj, the STF added.
A total of 34 suspects were arrested during the UPTET 2021 paper leak case on November 28. Police had arrested Gaurav Kumar from Aligarh who allegedly sold the questionnaire. According to STF, the suspects had sold the questionnaire for Rs 4 lakh while in some places it was sold for Rs 1 lakh rupees. The police have also identified the places where the photocopies of these papers were taken.
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Previously, there were four from Lucknow, three from Meerut, two from Varanasi and Gorakhpur each, one from Kaushambi and 13 from Prayagraj. Police also recovered the suspects’ cell phones and other important documents. The STF conducted raids in several districts, including Prayagraj, Meerut, Jhansi, Noida, Baghpat, Shamli, Varanasi and Kaushambi, and interrogated three others in Lucknow.
— with PTI inputs
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