Man cheats in job exam in Himachal Pradesh, 7 held

MANALI: Seven persons have been arrested for alleged involvment in leaking a question paper and cheating for a job recruitment exam held at Maharaja Lakshman Sen Memorial (MLSM) College, Sundernagar, on Sunday.
The exam was for the job of a junior office assistant (IT). It was being conducted by Himachal Pradesh Staff Selection Commission on Sunday. At MLSM College in Mandi district, the invigilator found the activity of one candidate to be suspicious and he contacted other officials.They caught the candidate, a clerk in Abhilashi College at Mandi, red-handed.
However, the accused crushed the cheat sheet and tried to flee, but examiners managed to catch him along with the slip. Later, DC and SP Mandi reached the spot for investigation and the whole matter was unearthed.
Mandi SP Shalini Agnihotri said the chit recovered from candidate Rakesh Kumar (46) had a serial-wise list of answers written by hand. “Further investigation revealed that an assistant professor working in Abhilashi College of Education, Mandi, who was on exam duty at MLSM college, was helping Rakesh. We took phones of both the accused in possession for investigation and reached other accused who helped them,” she said.
The SP said Rakesh, with help of clerk of the college, had got an idea of the seating plan and had calculated which series of questions he will receive. “He then asked Gopal Dass (45), who was on exam duty, to provide him the question paper of B-series. Gopal took a photo of the question paper and sent it to Rakesh on his mobile at about 10.30am. Rakesh then wrote the answers on a chit with the help of Google and some other people. Three persons Joginder Kumar (37), Sanjeev Kumar (26) and Vivek (25) were working as back up and kept preparing serial-wise answer chits. When the chit was ready with some answers unsolved, they handed it over to the clerk in college Balwant Singh (44).”
As the exam time was passing, Balwant reached Rakesh’s examination room and gave him a signal. Balwant gave the chit to Rakesh in the washroom. When Rakesh was filling his answer sheet with help of the chit, the invigilator caught him.
“At first Rakesh started apologising but later got aggressive, crushed the chit, and tried to escape. But he was caught along with the chit. We have taken his OMR answer sheet into possession. We have arrested seven persons in this matter . Ten mobile phones have been seized. Another candidate Anith Thakur (26), who is companion of Rakesh and was appearing for exam at Mahavir School, Sundernagar, has also been arrested as he had also seen the same leaked question paper on Rakesh’s phone and had tried to solve them with help of Google,” the SP said.
She added that the investigation is still underway and so far it is clear that the question paper was available to Rakesh and Anith before the exam and this question paper was sent to Rakesh by Gopal while others assisted them in cheating.
All seven accused from Mandi have been arrested under Section 420 of Indian Penal Code and Section 7 of HP Prevention of Malpractices at University, Board and other Specified Examination Act, 1984. Shalini said the accused will be produced before the court and will demand for custody for further investigation.
Meanwhile, education minister Govind Singh Thakur said it is matter of concern that the candidate had list of answers well in advance. “It clearly means that question paper was leaked. There is no politics in this matter. In the last 4.5 years, we have adopted complete transparency in all examinations and recruitments. There was no tampering with merit list during BJP regime and this paper leak matter will also be investigated impartially,” he said.