Noida: The UP special task force arrested two directors of a company associated with holding this year’s Staff Selection Commission (SSC) constable and rifleman recruitment examinations, in which a solver gang had managed to infiltrate an exam centre in Greater Noida’s Knowledge Park. STF said the firm, Assess Infra, selected Balaji Digital Zone in Knowledge Park as an exam centre despite prior cheating allegations linked to its operator.Gagandeep Sharma and Yadwendra Singh, the directors of Assess Infra, which is responsible for selecting examination centres, conducting security audits, appointing centre operators and verifying staff with police for the recruitment test in North India, including UP, were arrested from STF’s office in Surajpur following questioning on Tuesday.The accused, both residents of Jaipur, have been accused of deliberately compromising security parameters, neglecting mandatory verification guidelines and facilitating conditions vulnerable to cheating in exchange for money.Their roles came under scrutiny after STF arrested seven members of a well-oiled solvers’ gang on May 22 from Balaji Digital Zone in Knowledge Park, one of the SSC test centres Assess Infra had selected for holding 16 exams since 2025.Police claimed the gang had helped candidates clear competitive exams by giving answer writers remote access to their screens and was facing a probe for rigging the SSC examination for constable (General Duty) posts in Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) and Secretariat Security Force (SSF), as well as the Assam Rifles exam for rifleman recruitment this year.STF alleged that despite certain prescribed requirements not being met, the centre was allowed to function as an examination venue. These lapses were allegedly exploited by the centre operator, who reportedly arranged cheating facilities for candidates in exchange for money. A proxy server and other electronic devices were allegedly installed to facilitate the malpractice.Investigators also said that in April, the names of Balaji Digital Zone and its IT head Pradeep Chauhan came up during the investigation of a cheating case using proxy servers in Dehradun’s Mahadev Digital Zone. Chauhan was among the seven persons arrested in May for the Greater Noida centre cheating case too and was described as the ringleader of the gang.The STF team said that despite Chauhan being linked to cheating cases earlier, Assess Infra went on to identify Balaji Digital Zone as an examination centre in May.Assess Infra directors were arrested under BNS sections 318(4) (cheating), 338, 336(3), 340 (all related to forgery), and 61(2) (criminal conspiracy), besides sections 65 and 66 of the IT Act, section 13(4)(5) of the Uttar Pradesh Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act and sections 10(1)(2)(3) and (11)(1) of the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, a senior police officer said.The investigation in the case, meanwhile, has expanded to Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Delhi, with the STF examining links between centres, their security arrangements and equipment allegedly used during examinations. The probe so far has indicated that solver gangs used modified TFTs fitted with Raspberry Pi devices, proxy servers and other electronic equipment to facilitate cheating.
