Eight more people, including the alleged mastermind in the Class 12 English exam question paper leak case, were held on Friday, taking the total number of arrests to 34, the Uttar Pradesh Police said.
The UP Board's English language exam paper was cancelled in 24 districts on Wednesday after the paper was leaked, prompting Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to order stringent action, including invoking the National Security Act, against the culprits.
Among the Friday arrests, the alleged mastermind, Mulayam Chauhan, and three of his accomplices were nabbed by the police in Nagra and four others by a team in Sikandarpur.
Confirming the arrests, Deputy Superintendent of Police at Rasra, Shivnarayan Vaishya, said, "A team of Nagra police has arrested one Mulayam Chauhan, who is said to be the mastermind behind the English question paper leak. A total of seven other suspects have been arrested by our teams. They will be produced before a magistrate."
The police teams had earlier arrested 26 people, including Ballia's District Inspector of Schools Brajesh Kumar Mishra and three journalists.
The DIoS and one of the arrested journalists, Ajit Ojha, were sent to judicial custody on Wednesday after they were produced before the chief judicial magistrate. The remaining accused were produced before the judicial magistrate on Thursday and they were remanded to 14 days’ judicial custody.
Police have lodged three FIRs at the Ballia City Kotwali, Nagra and Sikandarpur police stations. The fresh exam will be held on April 13, according to an official statement.
Meanwhile, controversy also arose over the arrest of some journalists in the paper leak case as some locals claimed that the cops also held the whistleblower.
The locals claimed that Digvijay Singh and Ajit Kumar Ojha, the journalists working with a leading Hindi daily newspaper, had broken the news of the paper leak of the English subject of Intermediate, forcing the authorities to cancel the paper. The local administration, however, arrested those journalists, accusing them of being involved in the gang which leaked the paper.
