Exam racket: Chandigarh police say test centre manager arranged 14 proxy candidates, manipulated security codes

Pearson VUE through its local representative, Shantanu Kumar, had got an FIR registered against Mandeep Sethi with Chandigarh police.

Names of at least 22 candidates against whom proxy candidates appeared were mentioned in the FIR. The police officer said, “Preliminary investigation shows that for the payment for registering the candidates including proxy for the Computer Based Test (CBT), a common credit card bearing last digits ‘1582’ was used, which also alerted the governing authority of the company.

The palm vein scan of the 22 candidates were not tested when proxy candidates entered the examination room. All the proxy candidates were fluent in writing and speaking English and some of them have visited foreign countries also.

These 22 candidates had performed very badly securing hardly 3 or 4 bands out of 10 bands in their first test. But when they again appeared in another test after a period of fortnight, they secured 7 to 9 bands, which alerted the supervising authority of Pearson VUE in Noida.”

Police sources said, “The FIR was lodged on the basis of a complaint and internal findings of the company. We need more information regarding this cheating incident. The information included residential address of Mandeep Sethi, names of two other staff members. There are chances that Mandeep Sethi left the country.”

An official of Pearson VUE, requesting anonymity, said, “Besides Mandeep Sethi, two more staff members, hired by him, were also involved in the crime. He remained the test centre manager of Pearson VUE at Elante for one-and-half years.

We have also submitted CCTV camera footage, which shows how the actual candidates went to washroom and subsequently, proxy candidates dressed in the clothes of actual candidates appeared in the test.”
Responding an email query by Chandigarh Newsline, Caroline Darrington, PR head of Pearson UVE in London, states,

“To safeguard the integrity of our services, and our clients’ testing programs, we actively monitor against strict security policies, and conduct routine security checks. We investigate all allegations of proxy testing and any other fraudulent activities across our test center network. Upon initiating our investigation and identifying fraudulent activities, we promptly took action against those involved.’’