Balasore: Balasore Police arrested as many as eight more persons from different Odisha districts in connection with OSSC (Odisha Staff Selection Commission) JE (Civil) Main written examination question paper leak case, a source said Saturday.
With this, the total number of arrests made in this case till date rose to 25, the source added.
Earlier, eight people — including the alleged mastermind — were arrested in connection with the question paper leak, police said.
Mentionably, the OSSC July 24 cancelled the main written examination for junior engineer (civil) after police confirmed the leak of the question paper of the test conducted July 16.
Balasore’s Superintendent of Police Sagarika Nath said the investigation suggested that the question papers were leaked by Virendra Singh, who worked at the printing press where the question were printed. A native of Bihar, he was working as a helper at the press, she said.
“He came in contact with the mastermind Vishal Kumar Chaurasia. Vishal had told Virendra to supply him with any relevant information regarding the question papers being printed at his press,” the SP said.
Earlier OSSC said that as many as 92 candidates were suspected to have been involved in the question paper leak, out of which 55 were served show cause notices by OSSC and the agency was looking to link the remaining 37.
Notably, hundreds of JE (Civil) aspirants had staged a demonstration in Bhubaneswar August 1 alleging corruption in conducting examinations.
Prior to that scores of job aspirants July 31 had staged a protest in front of Balasore SP and Collector’s offices demanding a CBI investigation into the alleged irregularities in the examinations conducted by OSSC.
Amid the uproar on JE (Civil) examinations, scores of OSSC ULB Accountant aspirants July 30 staged a protest in front of their examination centre at Bhadrak Autonomous College alleging question paper leak. Aspirants claimed that the question papers were leaked as they had seen the seal of the papers broken before the commencement of the examination.
PNN