New Delhi: A day after TOI reported on police busting an alleged fake MBBS admission racket, police said they had issued notices to the alleged masterminds, asking them to join the investigation.
Their placement agency offices were raided in Lucknow and Noida, but they were missing, police said. The agency operated from a professional office space at a mall in Lucknow, where they conducted "interviews".
According to police, the gang allegedly duped NEET aspirants on the pretext of admissions to top medical colleges for a price.
The identity of the alleged masterminds, one of them a woman, came to the fore during the interrogation of a suspect,
Kumar Gaurav.
During the raids, carried out by a team led by ACP Anil Samota and station house officer Sanjeev Kumar, in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi-NCR, the cops uncovered a plethora of evidence regarding a sophisticated scam, including elaborate schemes such as franchising, fabricated interviews, and highly educated individuals operating from multiple offices.
The gang used to interview NEET aspirants who had either scored low marks or failed in the entrance. They also ran a backend office in Noida, where one of the masterminds and Gaurav used to meet candidates and collected their documents such as 10+2 school marksheets, NEET registration numbers, etc.
Gaurav (35) is a civil engineer who turned to crime after being laid off from his high-paying job during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. He allegedly shifted to fraudulent activities after gaining insights into medical exams from his wife, a dentist, and relatives in the medical field.
Police said Gaurav told interrogators that the masterminds wanted to expand their fraudulent operations by taking more space on rent in Delhi-NCR. They planned to scale up by interviewing dozens of women for roles in human resources at their Noida office to trap more desperate students.
The probe started after a 21-year-old aspirant approached police on Sept 6 regarding the racket. He said he was contacted by a woman on Aug 27, claiming she could secure his admission to a govt medical college for Rs 35 lakh. She introduced him to Gaurav, who posed as an agent and demanded Rs 7.5 lakh as advance, promising admission in the third or mop-up round. But the aspirant became suspicious and went to police.