Hindi teacher, 2 railway staff held in Uttar Pradesh for appearing as proxies in recruitment exam in Chennai

The Central Crime Branch (CCB) of the Greater Chennai Police (GCP) has arrested a Hindi teacher, a railway junior engineer, and a chief commercial-cum-ticket supervisor in Uttar Pradesh on the charges of impersonating candidates at an exam.

They had appeared as proxies in the exam conducted in 2023 in Chennai for the recruitment of multi-tasking staff (MTS) for the National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research (NITTTR). At least one of the arrested had acted as a proxy in other recruitment exams across the country, the police said.

The CCB began investigating after M. Ramesh, senior administration officer of NITTTR, Chennai, filed a complaint with the Police Commissioner. The NITTTR has its headquarters in Chennai and four extension centres in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, and Kalamassery. The institute had opened recruitments for 34 MTS post in June 2023. The process was handled by an external agency — the National Instructional Media Institute (NIMI), Chennai. Based on the examination results, the candidates were appointed as MTS at NITTTR, Chennai, and its extension centres.

Jaishanskar Prasad
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

In March this year, an anonymous letter sent to the NITTTR alleged that some of the recruited persons had hired proxies to write the exam. The NITTTR crosschecked the details of the candidate with those recorded at the exam venue and found discrepancies in the details of six candidates.

Based on the complaint, the police in July arrested Kajal, 34, of Haryana, Sakun Kumar, 25, of Bihar, and Tinkoo, Prem Singh, Ankit Kumar, and Jitu Yadav of Uttar Pradesh and questioned them.

Aravindh Kumar
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

A. Radhika, Additional Commissioner of Police, CCB, and V.V. Geethanjali, Deputy Commissioner, CCB, deputed special teams to trace the proxies who wrote the exam. One of the teams nabbed Jaishanskar Prasad, 34, of Bihar, who worked as a Railway Junior Engineer in Varanasi, and had been the proxy of Sakun Kumar. Another special team nabbed Aravindh Kumar, 30, of Uttar Pradesh who worked as Chief Commercial-cum-Ticket Supervisor at the Bulandshahr railway station in Uttar Pradesh. He allegedly impersonated Tinkoo.

Later, the police nabbed Dharmendar Kumar, 32, who worked as a primary school Hindi teacher at Madanpur in Firozabad district in Uttar Pradesh. He had allegedly impersonated Jitu Yadav. He had also impersonated candidates in other exams, the police said. The three were brought to Chennai and remanded in judicial custody after being produced before a magistrate court.