The Economic Offenses Unit (EoU) of the Bihar Police has arrested four people on Tuesday, including the block development officer (BDO) of the Barhara bloc (Bhojpur district) in addition to the director and controller of Veer Kunwar Singh College (VKSC) Ara, related to Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) question paper leakage.
The person arrested includes Barhara BDO Jai Vardhan Gupta, who was deputed as a static magistrate to oversee the investigation in the district’s Veer Kunwar Singh College Ara (VKSC), Dr Yogendra Singh, Chief Inspector of VKSC, Sushil Kumar Singh, teacher-cum-controller and Agam Kumar Sahay, teacher-assistant center supervisor of VKSC.
The preparatory test for the state exam for government services was held on Sunday and canceled the same day after the question paper was leaked. More than 6 lakh candidates had registered for Sunday’s exam for recruitment for 802 posts in Bihar’s government services. The PT exam was previously postponed twice due to Covid 19.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the EoU to investigate the paper leak first detained Barhara BDO, who was appointed a static magistrate to oversee the investigation in the VKSC of Ara district, affiliated with the Ara District on Tuesday. Veer Kunwar Singh University until 2017. The SIT members kept him out of his residence and took him to Patna for further investigation.
“We have arrested four, including Barhara BDO in the paper leakage case,” said ADG (EOU) Nayyar Hasnain Khan, adding that an investigation is still ongoing.
The SIT in charge of the probe registered the first information notification (FIR) late Monday evening and formally began its probe. During the day, the 14-strong SIT led by SP Sushil Kumar questioned at least eight people, including BPSC officials, static magistrate, director, examination controller, concerned center magistrate and the first young person to receive the questionnaire on his phone.
During the investigation, SIT found that the BPSC study leader who received one set of the leaked paper at 11:43 a.m. on Sunday, 17 minutes before the exam, would begin at more than 1,000 centers in the state’s 38 counties.
The SIT also spoke to the person who forwarded the 22-page questionnaire to the exam supervisor. This person, an official said, had received the questionnaire at 11:33 a.m. It is not clear who sent him the leaked paper. But an official stressed that WhatsApp tagged the document on his phone as one that had been “forwarded many times”.
The initial investigation indicates that all versions of the leaked research paper circulating on social media appear to originate from a single point.
The team, visiting Ara’s VKSC, also encountered complaints from aspirants that a select group of students sat in a separate room 15 minutes before the start of the exam at 12 noon and were given the questionnaires. An official said this may not be related to the leak, but if true, it indicates that the system devised by BPSC to ensure fairness did not always work on the ground floor.
The VKSC is affiliated with a well-known contractor Surendra Singh who comes from a political family and was previously involved in the fake stamp paper case. Surendra Singh, husband of a former JD(U) MLA from Barhara constituency, told HT by phone that the VKSC was established in 1978. His relatives donated 5 acres of land in the name of the state governor in 1987 to build the college. The university’s membership was canceled by the university in 2017. Singh declined the claim that the question paper leaked or went viral from the VKSC building.
However, Surendra, the former secretary of VKSC, admitted that more than 900 aspirants appeared in the BPSC PT and caused a stir after delays in the distribution of OMR sheets and question paper.
The Ara SDM orally allowed things and bags to be on the VKSC site during the exam period, which also led to commotion between students.
The FIR in the paper leak was registered based on the statement of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Bhaskar Ranjan under Sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for cheating) and 120b (conspiracy), in addition to the provisions under the 66 Information Technology Act and the 3/10 Bihar Examination Control Act.
