Caretaker sold Gopalganj answer scripts, say police

PATNA: In a major breakthrough in connection with the ‘theft’ of 40,000 answer copies of this year’s Class X examination conducted by the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB), the Gopalganj police on Saturday arrested two scrap vendors.
The policemen also recovered one missing answer copy from the arrested vendors’ shop off the national highway-28 in Hajiyapur in the district and sealed five empty bags found from the shop.
The vendors, identified as Pappu Kumar Gupta (35) and Sanjay Kumar (32), are learned to have told police that S S Girls’ Senior Secondary School caretaker Chhatthu Singh sold them the answer copies. The Gopalganj-based school was one of the evaluation centres.
Chhatthu along with a peon of the school has already been arrested.
Gopalganj SP Rashid Zaman told this reporter over the phone Chhatthu was paid Rs 8,500 by the scrap vendors in lieu of the answer copies. “Police have also recovered at least 140 bags covered under the grass near the school,” he said and added the scrap vendors claimed to have loaded the “purchased consignment” in a truck for further sale in neighbouring states.
According to the SP, police had got a tip-off that some scrap vendors were called to the school one night. They transported bundles of papers out of the school in an auto.
“We are probing if other scrap vendors were also involved in the purchase of answer copies from the caretaker,” the SP said.
The matter had come to light when BSEB officials Sujeet Kumar and Pradeep Kumar reached the school last Saturday to collect answer copies of two toppers for verification prior to the declaration of the results.
The results were slated to be declared on June 20. The ’theft’ forced the BSEB to postpone the declaration of the results to June 26. A senior BSEB official, however, did not rule out the possibility of further delay in the declaration of the results.
An FIR has been lodged in this connection at the Town police station in Gopalganj by the principal of the girls’ school.
Education minister Krishnanandan Prasad Verma hailed the arrest of the culprits. He expressed the hope that the missing answer copies would be recovered soon.