Gujarat: IELTS candidates lip-synced to English answers

AHMEDABAD: The bogus IELTS exams that facilitated more than 950 from Gujarat to move to the US and Canada had all elements of an entertainment show, complete with lip-syncing and play-acting. Investigation by Mehsana police has revealed that candidates paid extra money to crack the spoken English round of IELTS exams for which people from northeastern and southern states of India were hired.
Fluent in English, they would stand behind the cameras and speak out the answers while the candidates in front of the cameras would lip-sync like TikTokers, said police officials.

The speeches and conversations recorded for the 'speaking test' evaluation would thus have a professional English speaker's voice and the video of the candidate. Separate arrangements were made for dummy candidates who took the exams.
"We have come across many cases where dummy candidates appeared on behalf of US and Canada aspirants. One case each was found in Nadiad, Mehsana and Vadodara where dummy candidates appeared on behalf of the real candidates for the writing test. CCTVs were switched off in the IELTS exam centre to avoid detection," said a police officer.
During a search initiated as part of the investigation into human smuggling cases, 10 employees of an agency conducting the IELTS exam were found to be staying in an apartment in Ranip.
They included three women from northeastern states and one from a southern state.
These girls were hired on a monthly salary of around Rs 25,000 to lip-sync for the women candidates. The male lip-syncers were hired for a lump sum in the range of Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000, the police officer said. "In many cases, we also found that the picture in the candidate's passport was replaced with that of the dummy student at the IELTS exam centre. In some cases, the real candidates would leave the venue after the identity verification procedure and dummy students would walk in to take the exam," said a police officer. Seven centres in Rajkot, Vadodara, Mehsana, Ahmedabad, Navsari, Nadiad and Anand are under police scanner for conducting the IELTS exams in a fraudulent manner. Officers told TOI that at least 950 candidates are believed to have secured high IELTS scores this year by paying Rs 14 lakh each. All of them are now either in the US or Canada.
The case of irregularity in the IELTS came to the fore when six men who travelled to Canada on student visas were caught by the US agencies on April 28. They were rescued by the agencies of Canada and the US from a sinking boat in the St Regis while illegally crossing over into the US.
All of them had fraudulently obtained the IELTS certificates after appearing for the exams at hotels in Navsari, said sources in the state police and agencies. They had scored seven and eight bands but could not speak English.
The first case of irregularity came to the fore in April when a dummy student was caught taking the exam in Nadiad.