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Proxy candidates held during IELTS exam

The Shivajinagar police have arrested three youngsters, hailing from Hyderabad after they were allegedly caught writing the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam as dummy candidates in place of the originally enrolled candidates at an exam centre in the city. The police also seized fake passports from the suspects.

The IELTS is an exam designed to assess the language ability of candidates who need to study or work where English is the language of communication. It is the preferred test of English for students intending to study in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and covers the four language skills listening, reading, writing and speaking.

In the city, the exam was conducted on October 24 by Planet Edu, a global educational service provider and an authorised test centre for IELTS Australia for administering and managing the test in India and Nepal. The Gurgaon-headquartered Planet Edu has presence across 11 cities in the country.

The arrested trio has been identified by the police as: Paul Dinkar Sitaram Nunavat (25), Sai Abhishek Mudliyar (23) and Joel K.A. Shastri Kakilety (23), all from Hyderabad. The police have impounded fake passports from their possession. "The passports had their photographs affixed in an amateur manner," said sub-inspector G.S. Katke.

All the three suspects were produced in the court of a judicial magistrate first class (JMFC) on Sunday. The police sought the trio's custodial remand on the grounds that they need to thoroughly investigate the case and also needed to visit Hyderabad to examine the possibility of a bigger racket involved in the case. Following a brief proceeding, the court ordered police custody remand for the suspects till October 27.
Planet Edu's Pune centre manager Anil Ghatwal told TOI, "The exam was held on October 24 and the three suspects were part of the youngsters who had arrived at the test centre to write the paper. It was during a routine check that one of the centre officials got suspicious about the passports produced by the three suspects and reported the matter to the higher authorities."

Later, the police were summoned at the test centre and the suspects was detained for questioning, said Ghatwal, who is also the complainant in the case. He, however, avoided making any elaboration on the issue.
Nilesh Chauhan, Planet Edu's senior executive from Ahmedad, said, "Our staffers have been given special training to identify fake passports. This worked to our advantage during the exam on October 24. In all, 45 students had appeared and the three dummy candidates were detected in succession."

Katke said, "All the three suspects are fairly conversant with English language. One of them is a commerce undergraduate student, while another is doing science graduation in computers." The trio were staying at a hotel in Shivajinagar, he added.

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