TOEFL, CELPIP exam racket busted in Gujarat’s Anand, 1 held, search on for masterminds: Police
Using technology, suspects devised sophisticated arrangement to allow impersonation during exams, say cops
Police identified the arrested accused as Tarunkant Sharma, a resident of South Bopal, Ahmedabad. (Express photo) A HIDDEN passage through a wall, mirrored computer screens and dummy test-takers working from a separate room formed the backbone of an alleged exam fraud racket for international language proficiency tests such as TOEFL and CELPIP that was on Monday busted by the Anand Cyber Crime Police, which arrested one accused and launched a search for more suspects, including the alleged masterminds.
Police identified the alleged mastermind of the racket Harshad Raval and said he, along with his aide Arth Bundela, set up the examination centre under the guise of a legitimate facility. The centre allegedly conducted not only TOEFL and CELPIP examinations but also IELTS and other foreign-language proficiency tests required for overseas education and employment.
Police identified the arrested accused as Tarunkant Sharma, a resident of South Bopal, Ahmedabad, and originally from Sahibabad in Uttar Pradesh. Sharma was allegedly working as an employee of the centre under the direction of Raval, police said.
The police said that following specific intelligence inputs, a team led by Inspector J K Dodiya and Sub-Inspector H A Rishin on Monday carried out a raid at an ‘examination centre’ operating from a building behind a college near Anand Grid Chokdi.
Investigators found that a company, Link Horizon, was allegedly facilitating malpractice in online examinations conducted for individuals seeking opportunities abroad. These examinations included TOEFL, CELPIP and other online assessment tests that are often required for study, work and immigration purposes.
Police said the suspects had devised a sophisticated arrangement to allow impersonation during the examinations. During the raid, officers discovered two rooms functioning as a “test lab and a support room”. The rooms were connected through a concealed opening in a common wall. Police claimed that the accused used HDMI splitter adapters to mirror examination screens from the test lab to computers located in the support room.
Deputy Superintendent of Police J N Panchal said, “The setup enabled a dummy candidate sitting in the support room to take the examination on behalf of the registered test-taker. The system was designed to help candidates clear examinations through fraudulent means, thereby cheating examination authorities and compromising the integrity of the testing process.”
On the basis of the findings, Anand Cyber Crime Police registered an FIR under multiple provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, including Sections 318(3), 318(4), 319 and 61(2), along with Section 66(D) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which deals with cheating by personation using computer resources.
Investigators said the alleged fraud operation had been running for nearly one-and-a-half months, although the premises had been rented around six months ago through a memorandum of understanding signed with the college.
The police team also seized equipment and material collectively valued at nearly Rs 3.78 lakh. The seized items are believed to have been used in carrying out the alleged fraud. Police are analysing data recovered from seized computers, CPUs and mobile phones to determine how many candidates made use of the “operation” and how much money was collected in exchange for securing favourable results to reveal the “full scale of the operation” and lead to additional charges or arrests.
Both Raval and Bundela are residents of Ahmedabad. Teams have been formed to trace and apprehend them, police said.
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