Bihar official deputed as magistrate for BPSC exam among 3 detained in paper leak case

PATNA: Bihar’s Ara district 50km from the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) headquarters in state capital Patna may be the ground zero of the paper leak of the state civil services examination that was held on Sunday and cancelled the same day, officials familiar with the development said.

The special investigation team (SIT) set up by the Bihar Police to investigate the paper leak on Tuesday detained three people including Barhara block development officer Jaishankar Gupta who was deputed as a magistrate to oversee the examination in the district’s Veer Kunwar Singh College. An official said he is under the scanner for the lapses detected at the exam centre.

“We are investigating three people including Barhara BDO in the paper leak case,” additional director general (economic offences unit) Nayyar Hasnain Khan said, underlining that the team was looking at the case from all angles.

The SIT, set up by the Economic Offences Unit (EOU) that was entrusted with the probe, registered the first information report (FIR) late on Monday evening and formally started its probe. During the day, the 14-member SIT led by SP Sushil Kumar interviewed at least eight people including several BPSC officials such as the examination controller who received one set of the leaked paper at 11.43am on Sunday, 17 minutes before the paper was to begin at over 1,000 centres in the state’s 38 districts.

More than 6 lakh candidates enrolled for Sunday’s examination conducted for recruitment to 802 posts in Bihar’s civil services. The preliminary exam was earlier postponed on two occasions.

The SIT also spoke to the individual who forwarded the 22-page question paper to the exam controller. This person, an official said, had received the question paper at 11.33am. It is not clear who sent him the leaked paper. But an official underlined that WhatsApp tagged the document on his phone as one which had been “forwarded many times”.

The initial probe indicates that all the versions of the leaked examination paper circulating on social media appeared to have originated from a single point.

The team, which visited Ara’s Veer Kunwar Singh College, also came across complaints from aspirants that a select group of students were placed in a separate room and given the question papers 15 minutes before the examination started at 12 noon. An official said this may not be linked to the leak but if true, it indicated that the system devised by BPSC to ensure fairness did not always work at the ground level.

“The college is linked to a contractor who comes from a political family and was already on the EOU’s radar in the fake stamp paper case of 2013,” said the official. The college authorities could not be contacted for their version.

The FIR into the paper leak has been registered on the basis of 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 provisions under the Information Technology Act and the Bihar Examination Control Act.