LUCKNOW The UP Police Special Task Force (STF) arrested the director of a Delhi-based printing press from UP’s Gautam Buddh Nagar and another key accused from Baghpat district for their alleged involvement in UP Teachers’ Eligibility Test-2021 (UPTET) question paper leak while five others were held in Basti district for compromising question papers, said police on Tuesday.
They said the UPTET-2021 question papers were printed in the same printing press. STF officials also claimed to have unearthed the nexus involved in the crime, adding that the identities of three more accused were ascertained after these arrests.
The state government had cancelled the UPTET-2021 on Sunday (November 28) after the paper leak came to fore following the arrest of 29 people from five districts of UP and recovery of question papers from some of them hours before the exam on Saturday night (November 27). Eighteen people were arrested from Prayagraj, four from Lucknow, three each from Shamli and Ayodhya while one person was arrested from Kaushambi district in connection with the paper leak.
In a press note, the UP STF stated that the accused, Rai Anoop Prasad, director of RSM Finserv Ltd, Badarpur, New Delhi was arrested on Tuesday evening. He was first called to the STF office in Gautam Budh Nagar on Monday for questioning and was arrested on Tuesday after it was found he did not maintain secrecy while printing the question papers, read the statement.
During questioning, Prasad revealed that the secretary of Exam Regulatory Authority (ERA) issued a work order to his firm on October 26 for printing the question papers. He was found to have violated the secrecy protocol while printing the question papers, following which the papers were leaked and the exam was cancelled, said a senior STF official.
{{/usCountry}}During questioning, Prasad revealed that the secretary of Exam Regulatory Authority (ERA) issued a work order to his firm on October 26 for printing the question papers. He was found to have violated the secrecy protocol while printing the question papers, following which the papers were leaked and the exam was cancelled, said a senior STF official.
{{/usCountry}}He said Prasad was booked under IPC sections 420 for cheating, 409 for criminal breach of trust and 120-B for criminal conspiracy and sent to jail after being produced before a competent court.
Earlier on Monday night, the STF arrested another key accused in the paper leak case from Baraut area of Baghpat district.
As per the STF press note, the accused, Rahul Chowdhury, 30, of Chajjarpur village in Baghpat, was arrested from his shoe shop near Vedic Degree College in Baghpat around 8pm on Monday. One set of question papers of the second shift of UPTET and admit cards of some examinees were recovered from his possession, it said.
The press note stated that Rahul along with one Feroz of Baghpat and Balram Rathi of Shahpur, Muzaffarnagar, operated the racket of compromising the processes for different recruitment examinations from his shoe shop.
During interrogation, Rahul revealed that he arranged the UPTET question papers from one Ravi of Kandhla in Shamli district on Saturday night. The accused sold these papers to many people in return of ₹50,000 per candidate but the exam was cancelled as some people having these papers were arrested before the start of the exam, said officials.
An STF official said Rahul informed that there was also a plan to compromise the ongoing online examinations for recruitment of sub-inspectors in UP Police. The accused had set up a computer lab to hack computers during the examination but they failed to do it due to the alertness of NCEIT—an outsourced agency conducting the online exam. Thereafter, they tried to place proxy candidates but did not succeed, he added.
The official said Rahul was planning to hand over these question papers and admit cards to Feroz but the police arrested him before he could do so.
A press note issued from UP police headquarters stated that those arrested from Gaura Ghat bridge in Basti were identified as Anand Prakash Yadav, Jagdish Yadav, Vinay Kumar, Satyendra Singh alias Sonu, Ajit Yadav alias Dharmendra Yadav.
The gang was involved in providing question papers and arranging other means of copying for candidates, said officials, adding that the soft copies of question papers and answers were found in five mobile phones seized from their possession.
As many as 19,99,418 examinees were supposed to write the UPTET scheduled in two shifts at 2,736 centres across 75 districts of UP. UPTET is a state-level exam conducted once a year to enable candidates to gain eligibility to teach primary classes (1 to 5) and upper primary classes (6 to 8) in schools of UP government.