Guwahati, March 14: The criminal investigation department (CID) of Assam Police on Tuesday arrested three persons, including two teachers, in connection with the leakage of the General Science question paper of the ongoing High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC) examination.
Sources said two teachers of Bhauri Devi Sarawgi Govt HS School at Kahilipara school here, Jyotirekha Borgohain and Heramba Kumar Das, along with a Grade IV employee of Secondary Education Board of Assam (SEBA), Chitra Roy, were arrested by CID after a marathon interrogation.
The accused arrested were reportedly produced in the chief judicial magistrate’s court here on Tuesday afternoon and thereafter taken into three-days’ CID custody.
Earlier in the day, official sources said 22 persons, including several students, teachers and Grade IV employees, were detained by CID teams from various districts of the state in connection with the question paper leak. Notably, a criminal case (number C/23) was registered by CID in this connection on Monday.
“Reference to the paper leakage case of General Science (C3) of HSLC examination, being conducted by Board of Secondary Education, Assam, 22 persons have been detained at/from Guwahati, North Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, Sadiya, Dibrugarh and Tinsukia. Further lawful action as mandated by law is being taken against them. We remain committed to unearth the network of people involved in leakage of the question paper and the conspirators,” Assam director general of police G.P Singh had informed through a tweet on Tuesday morning.
Later, speaking to mediapersons here, Assam Police spokesperson and inspector general of police (law and order), Prasanta Kumar Bhuyan, informed that a total of 42 packets of question papers were sent to school at Kahilipara (the exam centre) and doubts about the involvement of arrested teachers surfaced after one of the packets was found to be missing from the centre.
Informing that a hand-written (duplicate) question paper and not the printed question paper had gone viral on social media, Bhuyan said the interrogation of the detainees as well as SEBA authorities was underway on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, amidst protests by several pressure groups and parties against the education department and SEBA, Assam education minister Ranoj Pegu said that tough measures would be taken once the CID probe was over even as he urged people to cooperate with the investigation and provide any available information/evidence to the CID in regard to the case.
It may be noted that as a part of the investigation, three officials of the SEBA, which is conducting the HSLC exam, were on Monday interrogated by the CID based on an FIR filed by the Controller of Examinations. Reportedly, teams of the investigation department visited the SEBA office here on Tuesday as well and interrogated officials of the board in separate sessions.
On Sunday, SEBA had decided to cancel the General Science exam after the question paper had gone viral on social media. The said exam will now be held on March 30, 2023, from 9 am onwards across all the centres in the state.