VADODARA: In a desperate attempt to secure a railway job, a candidate allegedly removed his thumb skin and pasted it on his friend’s thumb so that the latter could clear biometric verification and sit for the recruitment exam here in his place, police said.
But the crude attempt to trick the biometric machine was exposed when the transferred piece of skin fell off, an official said on Thursday.
The candidate and the ‘proxy’, both hailing from Bihar, have been arrested.
A senior doctor said they would have never been able to pull off the trickery even if the transferred piece of skin had stuck on.
On Wednesday, city police arrested candidate Manish Kumar and his friend Rajyaguru Gupta, both natives of Munger district in Bihar, for alleged cheating, said additional commissioner of police S M Varotariya.
Both are in their mid-20s and have cleared Class 12 exam, he said.
A private company authorised by the railways conducted a recruitment test for ‘D’ group vacancies in Laxmipura area here on August 22 for which more than 600 candidates appeared, the police official said.
“To prevent cheating (through impersonation), all the candidates were required to give their thumb impression which was matched with their Aadhaar data through a biometric device,” said Varotariya.
When a candidate who identified himself as Manish Kumar gave his thumb impression, verification failed despite repeated attempts, he said.
The exam supervisor grew suspicious when he noticed that the candidate was trying to hide his left hand by putting it in the pocket of his pants.
“When the supervisor sprayed sanitiser on his left thumb, the skin pasted on it came off,” the police official said.
After questioning him and finding out that his real name was Rajyaguru Gupta, a case was registered under Indian Penal Code sections 465 (forgery), 419 (cheating by impersonation) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) against him and Kumar. Gupta told police that as he was good in studies, Kumar came up with the idea of sending Gupta to take the railway test in his place.
“A day before the test, Kumar put his left thumb on a hot cooking pan which created a blister. He then removed the skin using a blade and pasted it on Gupta’s left thumb as he knew that there would be biometric verification before the test,” the police officer said.
An Ahmedabad-based doctor said such ‘transfer’ of fingerprint skin will never work.
“The skin and ridges on the fingerprint are made up of protein. When a blister is formed due to excessive burning, these ridges get defaced. So even if someone tries to paste such piece of skin on another person’s thumb, the biometric machine will never recognise it as the skin would have lost its original structure,” said Dr Rajnish Patel, additional superintendent at the Ahmedabad civil hospital.
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