Thane police unearthed the statewide leak of the question papers for the Army Recruitment Board’s written exam on Sunday and arrested 18 people. (Source: Express Photo)
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AS THANE police unearthed the statewide leak of the question papers for the Army Recruitment Board’s written exam on Sunday and arrested 18 people who leaked the papers to over 350 people, further investigations in Pune have revealed that the nine suspects arrested from the city had hired a community hall and were coaching the candidates on the previous night for the answers of the questions. Working on a tip-off from the owner of an institute, training youths for Army recruitment, Thane city police teams, along with the teams from respective local police, raided various places in Pune, besides Nagpur and Goa, and arrested 18 people and detained over 350 candidates to whom the papers were leaked. Of the 18 suspects, nine are from Pune. As many as 80 candidates of the 350 were appearing for the written exam, which was to be held at the Bombay Engineer Group and Centre in Khadki.
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From Pune centre alone, well over 3,000 candidates were to appear on Sunday. A police officer from Pune police’s crime branch said, “Based on inputs from Thane police, a team from the Pune crime branch and local Hadapsar police station, raided a Sanskar Community Hall in Bhekrainagar in the early hours of Sunday. It was found that the suspects had hired the hall. The question papers were circulated from the main suspects on WhatsApp and the suspects in Pune were coaching the candidates on the answers of the questions in the paper. Surprisingly, the candidates were directly going to the exam centre on Sunday morning from the community hall. Arrangement for food was also made for the candidates.”
Thane police are now probing the source of the leak and are also investigating the role of serving or retired Army personnel, without whom the leak could not have been possible. Another Army officer told The Indian Express, “While the police detained nine suspects from Pune, 80 candidates were sent to appear for the exam. After the exam, the suspicion was confirmed that the leaked paper and the actual question paper were an exact match.” It was later announced that the exams would be conducted again.
A police officer said, “All the nine arrested from Pune will be handed over to Thane police for further investigation. A decision will also be taken on what action can be taken on the candidates who had got the papers. Some of them were yet to pay the money to the racketeers. We have kept all the agencies in the loop considering the gravity of the matter.” Police probe has revealed that one of the suspects arrested from Pune runs an army recruitment training institute in Satara district and knew most of the candidates through that institute. Police said that the suspects held in Pune mainly acted as agents to contact the youths aspiring to join the Army.
Sushant Kulkarni is a Special Correspondent with The Indian Express in Pune with 12+ years of experience covering issues related to Crime, Defence, Internal Security and Courts. He has been associated with the Indian Express since July 2010.
Sushant has extensively reported on law and order issues of Pune and surrounding area, Cyber crime, narcotics trade and terrorism. His coverage in the Defence beat includes operational aspects of the three services, the defence research and development and issues related to key defence establishments. He has covered several sensitive cases in the courts at Pune.
Sushant is an avid photographer, plays harmonica and loves cooking. ... Read More
