Forged freedom-fighter certificates to claim a reserved MBBS seat: the gang Uttar Pradesh police broke up around NEET 2025, and why a quota document is verified later

India's medical admissions reserve seats for several categories, and each reservation is claimed with a certificate. In 2025 Uttar Pradesh police arrested a member of a gang that had been manufacturing one of the rarer ones.

According to Careers360, the gang secured MBBS admissions by supplying forged certificates identifying candidates as dependants of freedom fighters, a category with a small reservation in state counselling. A member was arrested; the certificates had been used to claim seats that would otherwise have gone to candidates higher on the merit list.

This is a different fraud from the ones that usually fill this site. Nothing about the candidates' NEET scores was false, and nothing about the colleges. The forgery was in the eligibility document, and it was used to move a candidate up a list, at the expense of a candidate who had no idea. The ED's investigation into forged NRI certificates for the NRI quota, recorded separately on this site, worked the same way at a different price point.

Quota documents are verified at admission, but usually from the copy presented, and the serious check comes later, when the certificate is sent to the issuing authority or when a complaint is made. Students admitted on a forged category certificate have been removed in later years, after the fees were paid and the seat was lost to everyone.

For a family going through NEET counselling, two rules follow. Never buy a certificate of any kind, however plausibly the seller explains the "process"; a reservation you are entitled to is claimed from the issuing office, free, and one you are not entitled to is a fraud against another student. And if a consultancy offers a "category seat" that your own documents do not support, it is offering you the forged certificate, with your name on the police file when it is found.