Cops claim Delhi trader is root of leak

BSSC PAPER LEAK

PATNA POLICE’S Special Investigation Team (SIT) claimed to have identified the root of the Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC) paper leak case with Monday’s arrest of a Delhi businessman, said to have been engaged by the commission to prepare OMR sheet for the scrapped exam. The arrested person, identified as Anand Raj Brar, was held in the national capital by a joint team of Patna and Delhi police, officials here said.

The examinations — to recruit more than 13,000 clerks and assistants — were cancelled after questions, and answers, were found circulating on Whatsapp in second phase of the examination on February 5.

“Brar’s role should have (been) limited only to the preparation of OMR sheet, but he also knew the printer of the question papers. It is a breach of secrecy, and it gives us one vital clue of the origin of the leak,” Patna SSP Manu Maharaj, who heads the SIT investigating the paper leak, told The Indian Express.

He said investigations so far have revealed that Brar was also in touch with several middlemen, who allegedly offered to solve the questions for candidates willing to pay in the range of Rs 6 lakh or Rs 7 lakh each and see them through both preliminary and written tests.

Maharaj said BSSC’S top officials did not give correct identity of the people who set the questions, the printers, and the person who prepared the OMR sheet, and that they learnt about Brar’s alleged role during the course of investigation. “We will try to get police remand of Brar to know his modus operandi,” he said. “We want to know who he was working for.”