Cuttack (Odisha) [India], August 4 (ANI): Odisha Crime Branch arrested Vice-President of the Board of Secondary Education (BSE), Odisha, Nihar Ranjan Mohanty, in the Odisha Teacher Eligibility Test (OTET) question paper leak case, Director General of Police (DGP) Vinaytosh Mishra said.
Speaking to ANI on Sunday, DGP Mishra said that initially, the data entry operator of the board, Jitan Maharana, was believed to be the main culprit in the case, but further investigation revealed that Maharana leaked the question paper in collaboration with Mohanty.
“Initially, we thought that he (Jitan Maharana) was the main culprit, but on further interrogation, numerous clues were revealed. We came to the conclusion that Jitan Maharana has done this in collaboration with Nihar Ranjan Mohanty, the Board Vice President.
As BSE VP, it was his sole responsibility to ensure the security of the question paper…Based on all the evidence, he has been arrested,” the police official said.
DGP Vinaytosh Mishra said that Mohanty did not delete the question paper after sending it for printing and had been in conversation with Maharana beyond office hours.
“After downloading it (question paper), he was supposed to proofread and send it to the printing press for printing. After sending, he was supposed to delete it. But he kept it in his laptop. That was the first lapse which came. He left it in the office. He said that the laptop was password protected, so nobody could access it. But it has been accessed. Either he gave the password to Jitan Maharana,” he said.
“His laptop has a lot of files. In just a minute or two, no one can find the exact file. Beyond office hours, he has interacted with Jitan Maharana more than a hundred times,” the DGP added.
He said that the question paper was leaked on July 20, after which the crime branch arrested six individuals.
“On the 20th, there was a question paper leakage of the OTET examination. After thorough verifications, we had arrested six persons, including a data entry operator of the board, Jitan Maharana,” DGP Vinaytosh Mishra said.
Earlier, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leader Lenin Mohanty had asked the Chief Minister, Mohan Charan Majhi, to take a stance on the paper leak. He also demanded action against the Vice Chairman of the BSE, whose laptop contained the question papers.
“We have demanded today very clearly that the minister who is in charge of school and mass education, who has a very dismal record in handling the SC/ST department as well, he should either resign or the CM should come out and take some stance, which should be kind of accepted by the people of the state,” he said.
Lenin Mohanty added, “Second, they should take action against the Vice Chairman of the board of secondary education whose laptop contained the question papers, Nihar Ranjan Mohanty and they should ensure that such things do not happen because just by framing laws, few days back they framed a law that anybody found doing this would be fined one crore and would be jailed for around 10 years. In the last one year, there hasn’t been one case where somebody has either been fined or jailed.” (ANI)
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