42,000 Bihar Board Class 10 answer sheets recovered from scrap dealer

Acting on specific information, the SIT raided the shop at Hajiyapur in Gopalganj district and recovered all copies of answer sheets that went missing last week.

A Special Investigation Team of the Bihar Police on Saturday recovered 42,000 missing copies of answer sheets of the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) Class 10th exam from a scrap dealer’s shop and arrested two persons in the connection.

Patna police detained Senior Secondary School Principal Pramod Kumar Shrivastava from Bihar School Examination Board's HQ office after thousands of answer copies of matriculation exam conducted by the Board went missing from one of the evaluation center, in Gopalganj, in Patna on June 19, 2018. (PTI File Photo)

Acting on specific information, the SIT raided the shop at Hajiyapur in Gopalganj district and recovered all copies of answer sheets that went missing last week. The team arrested the scrap dealer and his helper for purchasing them, police said.

According to the police, shopkeeper Pappu Gupta said that a peon Chotu Singh of a government-run school had sold the answer sheets for Rs 8,500 to him last week.

Following the reports in local Hindi dailies last week that 42,000 copies of answer sheets had gone missing from SS Balika Inter School in Gopalganj, an FIR was filed and school Principal was detained and interrogated by the police.

The Patna High Court has taken cognizance of reports and asked the state government to come up with an explanation within a month.

Around 17.7 lakh students have appeared for the BSEB 2018 10th class exam.

In 2017, just half of the students (50.12 per cent) had managed to clear the 10th class exam.