The crime branch of the Delhi police had questioned 32 people by Thursday evening, including the owner of a coaching centre, 18 students and some tutors, in connection with the alleged leak of question papers for the 10th and 12th CBSE examinations , Delhi police said on Thursday.
Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) R.P. Upadhyay said the police teams are tracking WhatsApp messages and had identified around 32 people who could have passed on the picture of the question paper to others. Three officials from the CBSE arrived at the crime branch to explain the process of how a question paper is sent to the exam centres and the security measures adopted to prevent leaks.
Meanwhile students in Delhi took to the streets to protest the CBSE’s decision to hold a re-examination for the subjects where the questions papers had been leaked. Political parties condemned the leak, with the Congress demanding that Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar and the CBSE chairperson be sacked.
Mr. Javadekar, however, said the culprits would not go scot-free and termed the paper leak issue as unfortunate. The Minister said the CBSE will declare the date of re-examination probably on Monday or Tuesday.
Warning fax
Tracing the events, the Crime Branch officials said on March 23, the CBSE had received a fax from an unknown source with a complaint stating that one Vicky, who runs a coaching institute in Rajendra Nagar in the national capital, was involved in the leak of the question papers. The complaint also said two schools in the area were also involved in the leak.
The complaint was forwarded to the CBSE regional office in New Delhi the next day, and the office sent a copy of the complaint to a police inspector via WhatsApp the same day.
Subsequently, on March 26, an unaddressed envelope containing four sheets of handwritten answers of the Economics exam held on the same day was delivered to the CBSE academic unit at Rouse Avenue.
“It has been established that both the papers were leaked before the scheduled dates of examinations and were circulated and exchanged on WhatsApp among some tutors and students,” said Mr. Upadhyay.
(With PTI inputs)
