Railway job aspirant removes thumb skin and puts it on a friend's hand in a bid to pass the biometrics; gets caught

In an attempt to procure a job in the railways, an aspirant charred off his thumb skin using a hot pan so he could attach the skin to his friend’s thumb, who would then clear the biometric verification and appear for the exam on his behalf. 

However, the attached skin fell off when the exam supervisor sanitized the proxy’s hands during the biometric verification at the railway recruitment test conducted in Gujarat’s Vadodara city on August 22.

The candidate and his “proxy” have been arrested. A senior doctor said they wouldn’t have been able to commit fraud even if the transferred piece of skin had stayed on. On Wednesday, city police arrested candidate Manish Kumar and his friend Rajyaguru Gupta for alleged cheating, said Additional Commissioner of Police S M Varotariya.

“To prevent any sort of cheating, all the candidates were required to give their thumb impression, which was then matched with their Aadhaar data through a biometric device before the test. At that time, the device failed to register the thumb impression of a candidate named Manish Kumar despite repeated attempts,” Vorotariya said.

During the biometric, the supervisor got suspicious when Gupta started to hide his hand. When the supervisor sprayed the candidate’s hand with sanitizer, the skin fell off his thumb.

The police have filed complaints against both the friends under Penal Code Sections 465 (forgery), 419 (cheating by impersonation) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy).