The police have arrested three more persons suspected to be involved in the TNPSC question paper leak case.
Kumar alias Karthick of Tiruvannamalai, Arun of Muthampatti and Boothesh of Hapur are being interrogated at a secret location.
Police sources refused to divulge further details saying that would hamper the investigation as those involved in the scam had a wide network spread across the State.
Internet centre under scanner
Printouts of the leaked questions of the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) Group-II examination were taken on the eve of the exams at an Internet browsing centre in Namakkal town, police sources said on Tuesday.
An inquiry conducted by a police team from Erode revealed that one of the four persons arrested by them claimed that printouts were taken from an Internet centre located on Senthamangalam Road, the police said.
They said five persons, including a woman, went to the centre and downloaded the content from e-mail. One set of questions ran to about 80 pages as they were handwritten. They wanted to take a total of nearly 5,000 copies of the content. They avoided taking photocopies as they feared that the scam might come to light.
Unusual request
Later, they asked the owner of the Internet centre if he could take 5,000 printouts, but this was not possible due to constraints in taking such so many printouts. Finally, they took about 800 pages.
According to the police, the owner of the Internet centre did not suspect anything amiss presuming the group was making copies of some handwritten model question papers.
On Tuesday, the Erode team took the owner of the Internet centre to Erode for investigation. During investigations, the team came to know that the persons who took the printout stayed in a lodge on Paramathi Road at Namakkal. The police were trying to identify those involved in the scam from the video images of occupants of the lodge recorded on the CCTV camera
At Ayakudi near Palani, M. Dharmaraj (27), postgraduate in science and undergraduate in education, was secured by the police in connection with the question paper leak from his residence on North Street on Tuesday.
He passed Group II examination and got through the interview last year and is awaiting appointment order. He has been preparing for the Group I exam.
A police team from Erode district came to his residence on North Street and took him to Erode for interrogation.
Teacher’s house searched
A private schoolteacher’s house here was searched on Tuesday night in connection with TNPSC Group-2 question paper leak.
Muthukrishnan, Inspector of police, who is part of special team, said: “He is an accused in the case and absconding. We searched his house after obtaining the court’s permission …”
Asked whether they found anything important from the house, he said: “We can’t say anything now.”
