Two days after the suspension of former director of secondary education, Vinay Pandey, the Ballia police on Thursday invoked the National Security Act against three persons for their alleged involvement in the leak of the Uttar Pradesh Board's Class 12 English question paper.
The three accused were identified as Ravindra Nath Singh, Rajiv Pratap alias Raju and Nirbhay Narayan Singh. They were arrested by the police on April 3.
“It may be mentioned here that the intermediate English paper examination of UP Board of Secondary Education, Prayagraj, held on March 30 had to be cancelled in 24 districts after its question paper was leaked on social media platforms.
Following the question paper leak, the government cancelled the exam in 24 districts, including the Ballia district. However, the examination was conducted in the other 51 districts on the same day while re-examination was held in 24 districts on April 13.
A case was registered in this regard at Bhimpura police station in Nagra after which the NSA provisions have been slapped against the accused," the police said in an official statement.
The police said that main accused Nirbhay Narayan Singh, who is the manager of Maharani Devi Smarak Inter College, allegedly got the question paper printed and solved by two English teachers and copies of the solved paper were sold for Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 per student. Singh and another accused Rajeev Prajapati also sent scanned copies of the question paper to other people on social media. The three accused took money from the students, in a bank account through Paytm transactions.
The Uttar Pradesh government conducted the state board English exam for class 12 on March 30 across 75 districts of the state.
Earlier on Tuesday, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had ordered the suspension of former director of secondary education Vinay Pandey, days after removing him from the post following an English question paper leak.
Pandey was removed as director of secondary education on April 21 and was posted as director of literacy alternative education, Urdu and oriental languages. A tweet by the chief minister’s office read, “Another strict action by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ji over negligence in the discharge of official duties. The then director of education (secondary) suspended.” He has ordered the suspension of the then director of education (secondary) who was found prima facie guilty of not discharging official duties properly, negligence and indifference towards government works and non-compliance of government-level instructions, it added.
