PUNE: A man was arrested on Thursday for allegedly trying to cheat seven aspirants of Senior Secondary Recruits (SSR) examination from August 28 to 31 at INS Shivaji in Lonavala under the pretext of providing them answer keys.The incident surfaced when one of the aspirants was caught cheating in the written examination of SSR on Tuesday. OP Singh, an assistant regulating officer of the Navy police, told TOI on Thursday, “During subsequent interrogation, the aspirant revealed that one Prakash Kotkar from Ahmednagar had provided him answer keys through WhatsApp and six other candidates on August 27 (Monday) night. We have confirmed that the questions he (Prakash) had quoted were not asked in the examination.”To arrest Prakash and his accomplices, the Military Intelligence (MI) unit of Southern Command and Navy Analysis Unit (NAU) got in touch with him through their dummy candidate . “Our candidate approached Prakash and promised him to pay Rs 7 lakh in lieu of answer keys. Consequently, Prakash was to collect the cash at Lonavala (about 60km from Pune) on Tuesday, but he did not come,” said a source.On the intervening night of August 28 and 29, the Navy police, with the help of Ahmednagar rural police, detained Prakash from Ahmednagar and took him to INS Shivaji for interrogation.“Prakash told us that he was keen to join the Indian Army and appeared in several recruitment rallies but couldn’t succeed. In 2016, Prakash got in contact with one Dhanraj More, who had promised him lucrative return if he provided candidates’ contacts. Accordingly, Prakash started working for him,” a senior intelligence officer told TOI.The duo, the officer said, attended recruitment rallies to lure aspirants.“Later, they used to send fake answer keys to aspirants and charge money. We strongly suspect that they might have cheated candidates in the similar fashion in the past. We are yet to get substantial evidence to prove it as our investigation is under way,” the officer said.The Lonavala city police produced Prakash in Wadgaon Maval court, which sent him to one-day police custody.

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