The ban on messaging platform Telegram has sparked mixed reactions. Critics of the move, along with opposition parties, slammed the government’s decision, while the Center maintained that the temporary restriction was necessary to ensure smooth conduct of the NEET re-exam scheduled to be held on June 21.
To understand the government’s rationale, it is important to examine the two directives issued to Telegram after the interventions of the National Testing Agency (NTA).
The first order suspends access to the platform until June 22, one day after the examination. The second, and perhaps more important, order directs Telegram to disable the message editing feature until June 30.
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Explanation of the editing bug reported by NTA
According to the government, this restriction addresses a technical loophole that allows fraudsters to not only hide the manipulation but also create the impression that the question paper has been leaked before the exam.
The restriction on editing letters targets a method that, according to the NTA, has been used to manufacture false evidence of paper leaks.
This glitch could make students and parents believe that the exam paper has been leaked previously. Explaining the issue, NTA said that a channel admin can post an innocuous message before the exam and later edit it to include the actual question paper after the exam is over. Since Telegram’s editing function does not change the original timestamp in the associated discussion group, it appears that the edited post was shared before testing.
“The resulting chat is then circulated as alleged evidence that the paper was in circulation before the examination,” the NTA said.
Read also | The ‘time travel’ loophole that led India to ban Telegram before the NEET-UG re-exam
How manipulation works
To understand the process, consider the following step-by-step sequence:
1. The channel admin creates a public Telegram channel and links it to a discussion group where subscribers can comment. When a document is posted in the main channel, Telegram automatically mirrors the same post in the associated discussion group.
2. Days before the test, the administrator uploads a blank or dummy PDF file. The post receives a timestamp—for example, June 18 at 10 a.m.—and the identical copy appears in the discussion group with the same timestamp.
3. After the exam, when the actual question paper becomes public, the admin will edit the original channel post and replace the dummy PDF file with the real question paper.
In the main channel, Telegram displays an “Edited” label next to the original timestamp. However, while the updated file is also reflected in the discussion group, the platform does not display the “edited” tag there.
4. The scammers then lock comments and direct users to view the discussion group version of the post. For the student or parent, the document appears in the chat with a timestamp from before the test and no indication that it was edited later. This creates the illusion that the paper has been previously leaked, allowing scammers to demand money from families and candidates by claiming to have insider access to exam papers.
Duo, who ran 8 channels on Telegram, was arrested for fraud
HT reported on Monday that the Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Branch arrested two Rajasthan-based men — Sumer Singh, an ITI graduate from Jaipur, and Akash Meena, a BA graduate from Kota — for allegedly running an inter-state Telegram scam targeting NEET aspirants. Investigators said the duo were running eight channels on the Telegram app while artificially inflating subscriber numbers, and charged the candidates with up to… $49,999 on charges of accessing question papers, which were allegedly almost laundered $1.5 crore through multiple bank accounts.
In a separate case, police tracked down and arrested Navinkumar Yadav, a resident of Bihar, on charges of embezzling refund payments meant for NEET candidates by redirecting them to his private bank account.
According to investigators, Yadav targeted nearly 350 student accounts on the NEET portal across multiple states and succeeded in reaching around 150 of them. Police said he used weak and easy-to-guess passwords to hack the accounts. Once inside, he allegedly changed the registered bank account details and replaced them with his own, with the aim of transferring the eligible refund amounts to his personal account.
