Empty bags of answer sheets found near Gopalganj school

PATNA: More than 20 empty bags were found near the S S Girl’s Senior Secondary School at Gopalganj on Wednesday as the blame game started over the missing 40,000 answer sheets of Class X examination conducted by the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB).
School caretaker Chattu Singh and guard Pujan Singh were sent to jail on Wednesday as they were named accused in the FIR lodged by principal Pramod Kumar Shrivastava at the Gopalganj Town police station on Sunday, police sources said.
The matter was reported when two BSEB officials reached the Gopalganj school on Saturday to collect some answer sheets of top rank holders for verification and found 214 bags with 40,000 evaluated copies missing from the strong room.
“The exact number of bags found could not be counted as the entire area has been cordoned off. A dog squad has been called to trace the person(s) who left the bags there,” Gopalganj SP Rashid Zaman told this newspaper on Wednesday.
He said a special investigation team (SIT) headed by ASP Neeraj Kumar Singh was probing the matter. “Principal Shrivastava is being interrogated,” he said. The other SIT members include Gopalganj Town police station SHO Ravi Kumar and sub-inspectors Braj Bhushan Singh and Ritesh Kumar Singh.
While education minister Krishnanandan Prasad Verma said it was the handiwork of some mischievous persons to defame the board and the state government, BJP MLC Nawal Kishore Yadav accused BSEB chairman Anand Kishor of committing financial fraud and demanded CBI probe into the entire case.
“What good the evaluated answer copies would be for the board official or school staff? The intention behind stealing the answer copies was to put the state government and BSEB in bad light. But I’m sure, it will not affect the results of Class X,” Verma said.
“Missing answer copies will create problem when students will seek scrutiny,” the minister said and assured that CCTV cameras would be installed at all evaluation centres, especially in the strong rooms, by next year.
SHO Ravi said there was no CCTV camera inside and outside the school premises or even in the strong room where evaluated copies were kept, he said.
BJP MLC Yadav accused the BSEB chairman of causing inconvenience to children. He also alleged that Anand had illegally made Rs45 crore in the name of Vasudha Kendras. “A CBI team should inspect the BSEB office and probe the entire issue,” he demanded.
Anand said the matriculation results would be announced on June 26. “The board will ensure that the missing answer copies does not affect the results of top ten rank holders,” he said.
Around 17.6 lakh candidates appeared for the Class X examination conducted in February.