NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police arrested the mastermind of an IGNOU paper leak and four of his associates who were allegedly involved in bringing out MCA and BCA question papers before the exam.
The main accused, Dev Shankar from Jharkhand, was a helper-cum-peon at an IGNOU centre in Bokaro, the police said. Vivek Kumar Sharma from Jharkhand, Ankit Saxena from Uttar Pradesh, Mohammad Iqbal from Delhi and Johanson Hans from Jharkhand were the other arrested accused.
Mobile phones allegedly used for sending photos of the leaked question papers were also seized from the arrested men.
On December 8 last year, a senior IGNOU official had lodged a complaint at the Neb Sarai police station that Question Paper, MCS-033 (Advanced Discrete Mathematics) of MCA 3rd Semester, Term-end examination, was leaked out before the exam. The official reported that he received mails with attachment of a question paper from two different emails.
Earlier, another case was lodged at the Dabri police station regarding leak of IGNOU Question Paper, BCS-031 (Programming in C++) of BCA 3rd Semester via WhatsApp.
Investigation of both cases was handed to Crime Branch and entrusted to IGIS/Crime Branch, Dwarka Section.
Soon, a team of Crime Branch under DCP Crime Bhisham Singh and ACP/IGIS R.K. Ojha began to look for suspects. Nearly 500 suspects were interrogated and their mobile numbers were examined. Technical surveillance gave vital clues to the crack police team to arrest Shankar. Interrogation revealed that the keys of the IGNOU study centre used to be with Shankar, who had access to the supervisor’s office and also keeps main gate keys with him, the police said.
It was there that Shankar used to photograph the question papers and send the photos via WhatsApp to his associates for selling them to the students. Money was received either in a bank account or paid in cash, the police said.
Other accused persons are being interrogated for their role in the leak and other such cases, the police said.