CBSE leakgate probe spreads beyond NCR
WHATSAPP TRAIL Police teams to go to Jharkhand, Bihar RANCHI/NEW DELHI:
A Jharkhand student received the Class 10 mathematics question paper over WhatsApp a day before the exams, police said on Saturday, punching a hole in the theory advanced by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the government that the leak had been restricted to the National Capital Region (NCR) centred on New Delhi.
As investigators continued to probe a maze of WhatsApp messages and email trails, fresh protests erupted in Delhi, with parents and students mounting pressure on the CBSE over the leak of the Class mathematics and Class 12 economics papers.
The superintendent of police in Jharkhand’s Chatra, Akhilesh B Verior, said the student received the handwritten question paper from another student in Bihar on March 27. The paper had the questions in the same sequence as they appeared in the official paper distributed the next day.
The student got the paper solved by a mathematics teacher identified as Amesh, who uses only his first name, working with a private coaching institute called Study Vision. Amesh and two owners of the institute – Sat- ish Pandey and Pankaj Singh —sold the questions for ₹500 to ₹5,000.
The trio has been arrested. Besides, at least nine students have been detained and produced before the Juvenile Justice Board here, the police said.
“We have not been able to establish any Delhi link in the mathematics paper leak. The electronic surveillance, however, has established that two students from Bihar were involved in the transfer of the question papers to Jharkhand,” Verior said.
The paper leak has triggered a political slugfest with the opposition accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government of incompetence for the leaks.
The the economics re-test will be held again nationwide on April 25. No decision has yet been taken on the Class 10 mathematics re-test, which the government said may be restricted to students of Delhi and Haryana.
In Delhi, Special Investigating Team (SIT) officials said they were yet to identify the people responsible for the leaks. SIT has questioned more than 70 people, including students, teachers and tutors in the past four days.