Sleuths of Special Task Force (STF) arrested seven persons in lucknow on Wednesday and claimed to have made a breakthrough into the leakage of question papers of sub-inspectors’ online examination last month.
Soon after the arrest, top STF officials said that besides the SI recruitment exam, the gang was also involved in leakage of other major on-line examinations. The accused were set to be quizzed further after getting them on custody remand. The gang leader was however yet to be arrested.
The sub-inspectors’ recruitment examination was organised by UP Police Promotion and Recruitment Board from July 7 to 31 at 97 centers across the state. The test, however, was cancelled after question papers were leaked on July 24 on social media sites like WhatsApp, Facebook etc.
On directions from the state government, a case in this regard was registered at Cyber Crime police station in lucknow and the the entire examination process was cancelled.
Detailing about the arrest on Wednesday, IG (STF) Amitabh Yash said that the 7 arrested for the leak of on-line SI recruitment exam were identifieid as Gaurav Anand, Balram, Pushpendra Singh of Agra, Dinesh Kumar, Deepak Kumar, Gaurav Khatri of Aligarh and Rakesh Kumar Vishwakarma of Mirzapur.
Yash said that the Recuritment Board had given the contract of examination to Mumbai-based firm - NSERT which forwarded the assignment to Agra-based `Om Group of Communications’. During probe, it surfaced that some employees of the Agra -based company connived with the gang and leaked the question papers as well as solved papers.
“It also came to light that Rs 10 lakh was charged by the gang who used to install remote access tools in computers of examination centers to solve the papers,” the IG said.
It also came to theh fore that the Mumbai-based firm which was initially hired to conduct the exam lacked necessary online security measures and ignored physical, administrative and technical counter measures. “A security audit of all recruitments made by the company is underway,” Yash said.
The IG further said that gang leader Saurabh Jakhar, was also wanted in the Railway on-line paper leak case and was presently lodged in Palwal district jail (Haryana) in connection with a murder case. His brother Gaurav Anand has since taken over and leading the gang.
“The gang has been operating in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The arrested persons have divulged some other names of gang members and teams have been were formed to drop then net on them,” said the IG, STF.