In a major crackdown in UP Teachers’ Eligibility Test-2021 (UPTET) question paper leak case, the Special Task Force (STF) on Wednesday arrested the suspended secretary of Prayagraj-headquartered Exam Regulatory Authority (ERA), UP, Sanjay Kumar Upadhyay, said Amitabh Yash, ADG, STF.
Another key accused Gaurav Kumar was also arrested from Aligarh on Tuesday night. His arrest helped ascertaining identities of seven more accused in the paper leak nexus, said UP police STF officials. In the past four days, 38 people had been arrested in connection with the paper leak case while the involvement of at least nine other accused, who were still at large, surfaced in the matter, they said.
The ADG said Upadhyay was arrested after the hours-long interrogation of Rai Anoop Prasad, director of the Delhi-based firm assigned the job of printing TET question papers, who was arrested from UP’s Gautam Buddh Nagar on Tuesday over his alleged involvement in the case.
Another STF official said that Prasad had revealed that Upadhyay had issued a work order to his printing firm, RSM Finserv Ltd, Badarpur, New Delhi, on October 26 for printing the question papers. He said the duo was found to have violated the secrecy protocol while printing the question papers, following which the papers were leaked and the exam was cancelled.
The UP government had on Tuesday suspended Upadhyay with immediate effect after he was allegedly found negligent in ensuring smooth, fair and copying-free conduct of UPTET-2021, said a senior government official.
UPTET is a state-level exam conducted once a year to enable candidates to gain eligibility to teach primary classes (1to 5) and upper primary classes (6 to 8) in schools of the UP government. The responsibility of conducting the exam lies with the ERA.
During interrogation, Gaurav Kumar of Tappal in Aligarh revealed that he arranged question papers with the help of his friend Nirdosh Singh and Vishnu, residents of Gonda and Aligarh, said another senior STF official.
He said Nirdosh arranged these papers through Dharmendra Malik, Ravi Pawar, Manish Malik, Ajay through some contact in Mathura.
Before Gaurav Kumar, another key accused Rahul Chowdhary was arrested from Baghpat on Monday for his alleged involvement in the question paper leak while five others were held in Basti on Tuesday night for compromising question papers.
The official said Rahul Chowdhary had also mentioned the names of three persons – Feroz of Baghpat, Balram Rathi of Muzaffarnagar and Ravi of Shamli.
The state government had cancelled the UPTET-2021 on Sunday (November 28) after the paper leak came to fore following the arrest of 29 people from five districts of UP and recovery of question papers from some of them hours before the exam on Saturday night (November 27). Eighteen people were arrested from Prayagraj, four from Lucknow, three each from Shamli and Ayodhya while one person was arrested from Kaushambi district in connection with the paper leak.
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