Police claimed to have busted a “highly sophisticated” racket in which an imposter examinee appears for a examination using a string of hidden devices to communicate with the paper solver seated 500 km away in Aurangabad.

According to police, an incident related to the racket took place in February last year with some arrests immediately thereafter, but the brain behind the racket was arrested on February 28 this year.

An FIR had been booked in Nagpur following the arrest of a man, identified as Indrajit Borkar, who cleared the exam for clerical post in cooperatives, marketing and textiles department of the state government in February 2020, scoring 178 marks out of 200 to emerge as the topper.

Police said Borkar was caught when the authorities cross-checked his photograph with CCTV footage at the exam centre, when his signature on the day of the submission of papers did not match with the one on the answer sheet. The man in the CCTV footage was not Borkar, police added.

Police further said Borkar, however, did not directly know the imposter, with at least three intermediaries also working in the racket.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone I) Noorul Hasan said, “The imposter, Pratapsingh Dhondiram Dulhat, was arrested in Aurangabad when he was going to appear for the exam for a clerical post in the health department for someone else in Pune.”

“Dulhat was hiding a Bluetooth device inside his ear, which was connected to a mobile tucked inside his underwear. He also had a spy camera and a mobile phone behind his T-shirt’s buttonhole, from where it would take pictures of the question paper every four seconds and send them by email to one, Poonamsingh Sundarade, at Aurangabad. Sundarade was also accompanied by one, Premsingh Rajput, a clerk with National Highways Authority of India. Sundarade would search for the answers on Google and narrate them to the imposter on his Bluetooth device,” Hasan said.

Hasan further said, “We had scanned the call details of Borkar and his father Vasant to zero in on 10 numbers. One of these 10 numbers was that of Dulhat, whom we managed to apprehend at Aurangabad by tracking his mobile number.”

Asked if Borkar knew Dulhat, Hasan said, “No. There were at least four persons in the chain leading to Dulhat and Rajput.”

“Rajput is currently on anticipatory bail, which we will get cancelled from court,” Hasan said.