Govt defers hiring exam in UP after paper leak, 11 held

A PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER, SUSPECTED TO BE THE MASTERMIND BEHIND THE PAPER LEAK, HAS BEEN ARRESTED ALONG WITH FIVE EXAM ASPIRANTS

LUCKNOW : The Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Services Selection Commission (UPSSSC) recruitment examination for tubewell operators, which was scheduled for Sunday, has been postponed following reports of a paper leak.

The UP Special Task Force (STF) arrested 11 people, including a primary school teacher suspected to be the mastermind behind the leak, from Meerut on Sunday morning.

The recruitment examination was scheduled to be held at 364 centres across the state.

The commission said the fresh examination schedule would be announced soon.

Senior superintendent of police, STF, Abhishek Singh, said five exam aspirants are among those arrested.

He added that a primary school teacher, Sachin Chowdhary, was the mastermind behind the leak.

Singh said Chowdhary, a native of Meerut, was posted in Amroha and used his connections to sell the question papers for about ~7 lakh each.

Police had laid out a plan to catch Chowdhary red-handed while he was handing over the leaked papers to students about 15 hours before the test.

Government authorities were alerted after the questions in the papers seized matched the questions in the original papers, Singh said.

He added that the STF team also recovered about ~15 lakh, admit cards of several examinees and over a dozen mobile phones from those arrested. Chowdhary is being questioned to find the source of the leak.

Police said Chowdhary had frequently made phone calls to specific numbers over the past few days.

It is suspected that he was corresponding with those involved in leaking the questions.

More raids are being conducted to arrest other suspects.

“An FIR of fraud and forgery has been registered against those arrested and other unidentified persons...,” Singh said.

The tubewell operators’ exam was scheduled to fill a total of 3,210 vacancies and nearly two lakh aspirants had applied for it.

Soon after the news of the exam being postponed broke, students launched protests outside the examination centres.