A heartbreaking case of negligence and fraud surfaced in Kerala, where a young NEET aspirant’s future was derailed by the carelessness of a local Akshaya Centre employee who forged a hall ticket to cover up her own mistake. The police on Monday arrested the Akshaya Centre employee in Neyyattinkara after she forged a NEET hall ticket for a student whose application she had failed to submit despite accepting payment.

The student, who aspired to become a veterinary doctor, was caught at an exam centre in Pathanamthitta with a fake admit card, unaware he had been handed a fake document just hours earlier.
The accused, identified as Greeshma, a 20-year-old resident of Thirupuram, worked at an Akshaya Centre in Neyyattinkara, Thiruvananthapuram. According to a report by The Times of India, Greeshma accepted Rs 1,850 from the student’s mother, who works as a sanitation worker, for submitting the NEET application. But she failed to complete the process and, in a desperate attempt to cover her tracks, fabricated a fake hall ticket.

Greeshma reportedly told police that she assumed the student wouldn’t travel to Pathanamthitta to write the exam. She admitted that after missing the application deadline, she found details of a centre at Thaikkavu Vocational Higher Secondary School through a Google search and inserted them into the forged ticket. She used the credentials of another student to generate the document, mistakenly thinking the deception would go unnoticed.

However, the scam unravelled at the examination centre after invigilators became suspicious upon finding mismatched details in the hall ticket – the student’s name appeared in one section, but another name was listed elsewhere. The discrepancy led to immediate intervention by the exam centre observer, who filed a formal complaint, prompting a swift police investigation.

The student, shocked and confused by the accusation of using a forged document, was briefly detained and questioned. He told investigators that the hall ticket had been given to him directly by the Akshaya Centre employee. This led the Pathanamthitta police to Neyyattinkara, where they arrested Greeshma on Monday.
The boy’s ordeal has sparked public outrage and sympathy. This was his second attempt at the NEET exam. His family, already battling economic hardship, had borrowed around Rs 2.5 lakh to fund his coaching. His father is mentally challenged, and his mother, a cleaning worker, had been praying outside the exam centre the entire time, unaware of the storm unfolding inside.

Speaking after the incident, the mother said she only understood the gravity of what had happened when the police explained that her son had been the victim of a scam.

Police say the case underscores urgent concerns about oversight at Akshaya Centres, which are meant to provide citizens with transparent and accessible public services. The investigation is ongoing, and the police are trying to determine if this was an isolated incident or part of a broader lapse in the system.