Solvers’ gang adept in mixing proxies photos using AI busted | Lucknow News
Lucknow: 10 members of a solvers’ gang, including mastermind Anand Kumar, 34, assistant manager at Prathama UP Gramin Bank in Sambhal, were arrested from Bijnor road area in Lucknow on Tuesday.The gang modus operandi included blending photographs of real candidates and proxies using AI-based apps, until they appeared nearly identical — often matching 70% of facial features. With forged Aadhaar and PAN cards to back the illusion, proxies slipped into exam centres posing as genuine aspirants. The others who were arrested included Gaurav Aditya (31), a student from Patna, Bihar; Harsh Joshi (32), a student from Champawat, Uttarakhand; Bhagirath Sharma alias Chandan (30), a clerk at UP Gramin Bank, Moradabad; Sudhanshu Kumar (36), an officer at UCO Bank, Lakhisarai; Dhananjay Kumar Saurabh (33) and Rajeev Nayan Pandey (33), both students from Jehanabad, Bihar; Mukesh Kumar (30), a clerk with EPFO in Gopalganj; Ashish Ranjan (25), a student from Nalanda; and Abhishek Kumar (35), a proxy candidate from Gaya, Bihar. Two suspects — Yogendra Kumar and Akash Deep — remain on the run, believed to have coordinated logistics and document forgery from Bihar. Police recovered 16 mobile phones, 21 ATM cards, nine Aadhaar cards, seven PAN cards, multiple laptops, and Rs 1.53 lakh in cash. Additional DCP, South Zone, Vasanth Kumar, who led the probe in the case, said that when invigilators at a Bijnor exam centre grew suspicious of a candidate’s behaviour during the IBPS Clerk Examination 2025, they had no idea they were about to unravel one of the most technologically advanced cheating syndicates operating across states. “The arrest of Abhishek Kumar, who was impersonating another candidate, set off a chain of events that led police to an inter-state solver network spanning Bihar, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. Within 48 hours, we exposed a racket that used artificial intelligence and face-mixing software to outsmart biometric and visual identity checks,” ADCP Kumar said.
