The police in Patiala claimed to have unearthed a racket involved in arranging impersonators for candidates taking the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) examination. The police arrested four impersonators, two of them girls, as they were taking the exam on Saturday, as well as three employees of the British Council which organises the exam.

SSP Ranbir Singh Khatra said while seven persons had been arrested, the police were on the lookout for another accused. He said after Esha Gupta, the coordinator of British Council, complained about fake candidates taking the exam, a police team was rushed to the venue. During interrogation, the four told the police that they were part of a gang operating to help candidates clear the examination which tests proficiency in English for higher education, immigration and employment. Thousands of students, who seek to migrate abroad, take the IELTS exam every year. Police fear that some institutes offering training for the exam could be part of the racket.

Police said each candidate seeking to clear the exam would pay up to Rs 5 lakh to the gang and the impersonators were paid up to Rs 30,000 each. Police said they were looking for the kingpin of the gang Abha Rani Gupta who runs Cambridge Institute in Karnal, Haryana.

The four impersonators have been identified as Ambika Sharma of Karnal, who was taking the exam for Kamaljit Kaur of Patiala; Gagandeep Kaur Dhillon of Udham Singh Nagar in Uttarakhand who was writing for Amrita Kaur of Ferozepur; Naveen Luke of Karnal who was taking the exam for Gurpreet Singh and Lalit Arora of Ropar who was writing for Mandeep Singh of Anandpur Sahib. The three arrested employees of the British Council are Anil Kumar, Neeraj Kumar and Sourav Goyal, all from Chandigarh. Another employee, Navneet Goyal of Narwana, is absconding.