"Duolingo English Test" Scam to Irish Third Level Institutions; Indian gang arrested

Hyderabad: Indian police on Monday arrested a gang involved in cheating in Irish tertiary institutions entrance exams.

On February 19, seven people were nabbed by the Hayatnagar Police Special Operation Team in LB Nagar Zone, Hyderabad, India. The applicants were cheated by charging money to write the exam. Four accused candidates, two facilitators and a student who appeared for the candidates were caught.

Duolingo English Test:

The Duolingo English test is an English proficiency assessment used to assess a candidate's ability to read, write, speak and listen to English. It is a computer-adaptive test and the difficulty of the questions will increase or decrease depending on the answers given.

Third-level institutions, including Ireland's leading universities, use the Duolingo English test to admit students. There are 60 educational facilities in Ireland that accept the Duolingo test.

List of some Irish educational facilities that accept the Duolingo English test in the application process for overseas candidates:

• Dublin Business School,
• Dublin City University,
• Dundalk Institute of Technology,
• Maynooth University,
• National College of Art and Design,
• National College of Ireland,
• Trinity College Dublin,
• University College Cork,
• University College Dublin

Irish facilities may have been unwittingly duped, police said, with 'middlemen' charging candidates between €100-€200 with a guarantee of a pass score. The crime squad conducted a raid based on a tip-off and arrested the three accused from a room in a lodge in Hayatnagar. After questioning, the accused revealed that they had faked the Duolingo test.

BSc Computer Science student Kandakatla Praveen Reddy (22) was impersonating like other candidates. There is a complaint that business administration student Trivedi Harinath (21) and commerce student Banala Krishna (21) acted as middlemen. Engineering students Edavalli Aravind Reddy (21), Nenavat Santhosh (21), Computer Science student Malladi Naveen Kumar (26), and another engineering student Alakuntla Vinay (22) attempted to cheat. Five laptops, four passports and seven mobile phones were also seized. A case under Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered and further investigation is underway.