How Russian national allegedly helped manipulate JEE ( Mains) exam

The CBI on Monday arrested Russian national Mikhail Shargin in connection with its probe into alleged manipulation of last year's JEE (Mains), the entrance examination for admission to top engineering colleges.

The arrest was the outcome of an investigation in which it was found that some foreign nationals were involved in compromising many online examinations, including JEE (Mains).

The Central Bureau of Investigation suspects Mikhail Shargin to be the main hacker in the bid to manipulate the results of JEE (Mains).


As per reports quoting details of the CBI investigation, this was how the fraud panned out.

• Mikhail Shargin allegedly tampered with the iLeon software. This was the platform on which the JEE (Main)-2021 examination was conducted.
• Shargin allegedly also helped other accused in hacking the computer systems of suspect candidates during the examination. The exam was held only on control-restricted computers at designated centres.
• 'Teachers' who got remote access to question papers of these candidates, sat in another location in Sonepat and solved the questions.
• Three directors of Affinity Education Pvt Ltd - Siddharth Krishna, Vishwambhar Mani Tripathi and Govind Varshney - have been booked for manipulating the online examination of JEE (Mains) in conspiracy with other associates and touts.
• They allegedly charged ₹12 to ₹15 lakh per candidate to facilitate admissions in top National Institutes of Technology (NIT), PTI reported.
• Class 10 and 12 mark sheets, user IDs, passwords, and post-dated cheques of the candidates were kept as security.
• Once the candidates get admission, the accused would collect hefty commissions from the beneficiaries.

There had been a 'Look Out Circular' against Shargin. The CBI alerted by the Bureau of Immigration when Shargin arrived at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport from Almaty, Kazakhstan, after which he was picked up.