Centre head stole CBSE Eco questions from bank, got them WhatsApped for kin

New Delhi: Delhi Police has cracked the mysterious leakage of the CBSE class XII Economics paper and has arrested three people, including a school centre superintendent from Una, Himachal Pradesh. The other two arrested are a clerk and a peon, both of whom worked at DAV School, Una.

The CBSE paper leakage, which earlier seemed to be the handiwork of an organised gang, surprisingly turned out to be the mischief of one man, Rakesh Kumar, who works as a Commerce and Economics teacher at DAV Centenary Public School, Una. Police said that he misused his official position of centre superintendent at a nearby school, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, and stole the economics question paper from the bank locker on March 23.

"As centre superintendent, his duty was to collect and bring the sealed question papers from Union Bank of India, Una, which was the custodian of the question papers. On March 23, when he was taking the computer question paper from the bank, he cleverly took out a packet of class XII Economics question papers and handed it over to the clerk Amit Kumar and peon Ashok of the same school," said Special CP (Crime) R P Upadhaya. This is how they got access to Economics question paper three days before the scheduled date of the CBSE class XII Economics exam, which was March 26.

In filmy style, the three of them took different routes to dodge any suspicion. While Ashok and Amit headed towards the DAV school, Rakesh went to Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya with the computer question paper. However, he had already instructed Amit and Ashok what to do with the sealed Economics paper.

As per their plan, Amit and Ashok took the bundle with them and opened it in the car itself. Amit then photographed the paper and WhatsApped it to Rakesh. After getting the picture of this paper on WhatsApp, Rakesh then contacted one of his students and asked her to get this paper hand-written. The girl then wrote the question paper in her handwriting. Rakesh then got a mobile photograph of the handwritten paper.

"He intended to transfer the question paper to Chandigarh where one of his relative's children was appearing in the class XII exam. The accused Rakesh then forwarded the photo of the handwritten Economics paper to his relative via WhatsApp. This is where the chain reaction started and the paper got forwarded to close to 40 WhatsApp groups two days before the Economics exam," said Joint Commisioner of Police Alok Kumar under whom the Special investigation Team (SIT) was formed.

The police said that later on March 26, Rakesh took the stolen Economics bundle to the bank strong room and mixed it with the other bundles. He then took the Economics paper to the exam centre. Investigating the case, the police said that they have to take the help of their cyber investigation team along with handwriting expert to take the investigation to Una in Himachal Pradesh.

"Our team reached Chandigarh after analysing over 40 WhatsApp groups and tracking the origin of the leaked handwritten paper. From there, our team sniffed the role of Rakesh and a team was sent to Himachal Pradesh to investigate his role," said Joint CP (Crime) Alok Kumar. However, the police said that no money changed hands in the initial investigation. See P3