AHMEDABAD, DEC 17
Gujarat police have arrested six persons allegedly involved in leaking a question paper of an exam held recently in the state for the recruitment of government head clerks, a minister said on Friday.
The written exam for the recruitment of 186 head clerks was held at different centres across the state on December 12 by the Gujarat Subordinate Service Selection Board (GSSSB), with nearly 88,000 aspirants appearing for the test.
“Of the 10 accused named in the FIR registered at Prantij police station of Sabarkantha district, six have been arrested,” Minister of State for Home, Harsh Sanghavi, said.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had earlier claimed that the question paper was leaked prior to the exam.
“We had formed 24 teams after learning about the paper leak. While six persons involved in the crime have been arrested, the remaining four will also be nabbed soon. As a pre-planned conspiracy, they leaked the paper, solved it, and then gave it to candidates before the exam,” Sanghavi told reporters in Gandhinagar.
He said no decision to cancel the exam has been taken by the state government yet. The six accused arrested by the Sabarkantha district police, have been identified as Dhruv Barot, Mahesh Patel, Chintan Patel, Kuldip Patel, Darshan Vyas and Suresh Patel, all residents of Sabarkantha district.
The accused persons had managed to acquire the question paper before the exam after which they sold it to the candidates for nearly Rs 15 lakh and also helped them in solving the paper at various locations a day before the exam, the FIR said.
One Jayesh Patel from Unchha village in Prantij taluka had managed to get the question paper and gave it to those linked to him. So far, it has come to light that 16 candidates, including Dhruv Barot, received the question paper from the accused a day before the exam, it said.
These 16 candidates were divided into three different groups and taken to three different locations near Prantij on December 11 to solve the question paper. On the exam day, the accused persons arranged transportation to drop these candidates to their respective exam centers, the FIR added.
The accused have been booked under IPC sections 420 (cheating), 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy).
AAP’s Gujarat unit youth wing leader Yuvrajsinh Jadeja had on Monday alleged that the question paper was leaked prior to the exam. As a proof, he had shared a photograph of a notebook page having handwritten answers of some of the questions asked in the exam.
