CBSE paper leaks: Chargesheet filed, 10 accused named

NEWDELHI: Eight months after an FIR was registered in the CBSE question paper leaks case, a special investigation team (SIT) of the Delhi police’s crime branch Thursday submitted a 482-page chargesheet before a city court.

Additional commissioner of police (crime), Rajiv Ranjan, confirmed that the police have named 10 accused, including a woman, two bank officials, four employees of a Delhi school, a teacher from a coaching centre and two employees of a school in Himachal Pradesh’s Una, in the chargesheet. All the 10 people arrested have been booked for cheating (420), criminal conspiracy (120B), criminal breach of trust (406), criminal breach of trust by public servant or by banker (409) and for causing disappearance of evidence of offence (201), Ranjan said.

The Economics question paper for class 12 and Mathematics question paper for class 10 exams were leaked on March 26 and March 28 respectively, via Whatsapp, hours before the exam. The re-examination of the Class 12 examination was conducted on April 25. However, no retest was held for the Class 10 Maths paper.

More than 75 people — students, teachers at coaching centres, parents and a school teachers — were questioned and over 50 mobile phones were seized and sent for forensic examination during the probe . Police had also zeroed in on six Whatsapp groups that figured in the trail of circulation of question papers.

The Economics paper was leaked on March 26, when two teachers of Mother Khazani Convent School, in outer Delhi’s Bawana, Rishabh and Rohit, allegedly clicked picture of the economics question paper of class 12, an hour prior to the exam, and sent it to one Tauqeer Hasan, a teacher at a coaching institute, through Whatsapp.

DCP (crime), G Ram Gopal Naik, said,“suspected to be mere pawns to a bigger syndicate, the Rishabh, Rohit and the principal were put under surveillance. On April 1, around 3 am, a crime branch team raided a few premises in outer Delhi’s Bawana and rounded up the three men. Hasan was the first one picked up on the basis of technical surveillance,” Naik said, adding Raishabh, Rohit and Hasan were arrested on the same day.

Naik said they traced a man Rakesh Kumar in Una, Himachal Pradesh, and on the intervening night of April 6 and 7, he was nabbed. “He disclosed he is a teacher at DAV Centenary Public School in Una and that on March 23, he was appointed as a centre superintendent at a school to collect the question paper from a local and bring them to the examination centre. He said he, Amit Kumar, a clerk at his school, and a peon Ashok Kumar, he went to the bank and collected the question papers. He said while collecting question papers, he also took one bundle of the economics paper, which was to be held on March 26,” Naik said.

Rakesh left the economics question paper bundle with Amit and Ashok. Amit took out one paper, clicked a picture and sent it to Rakesh, the DCP said. Police found Rakesh called one of his students and made him write down the question paper, which Rakesh sent to his relative, Anju Bala.

On April 12, police arrested Sheru and Om Prakash, the bank employees from whose custody the papers were leaked. Praveen Kumar Jha, the principal of Mother Khazani Convent School, was arrested on July 4.