Paper leak: CBI says racket on for 5 yrs

Yesterday, it was the future of 1.27 lakh students at stake, today, the fortunes of several lakhs more has been put to question. The CBI has...

Yesterday, it was the future of 1.27 lakh students at stake, today, the fortunes of several lakhs more has been put to question. The CBI has confirmed that the racket of selling question papers, which it busted yesterday, had been running for ‘‘at least five years’’ and that the gang, led by businessman Ranjit Singh, charged around Rs 4-12 lakh for each set of question-answer.

CBI Director P.C. Sharma told The Indian Express: ‘‘It is not only the CAT exam in question here. We have information that papers of several other examinations like the CBSE medical and the test taken for gazetted bank posts and probationary officers were also sold by these men. Some papers for entry into the judicial service in Bihar have been similarly leaked. This is a case with nation-wide ramifications.’’

‘‘Our crackdown shows how standards have fallen everywhere and how even the examination system, which was respected by everyone, has been subverted. This is a major setback for students who have been preparing honestly and sincerely. Preliminary investigations are in progress in several states and it is too early to say if any previous examination will be cancelled,’’ he added.

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CBI officials, handling the case, estimate that Ranjit and his gang may have earned nearly Rs 80 crore so far. Searches are on at different places in Delhi, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to ascertain how much money actually changed hands and how many students bought the papers.

These officials maintain that several IIM directors contacted them today and absolved any member of their faculty from being involved in the racket. The CBI director, too, gave a clean chit to faculty members. ‘‘ We are not holding any member of the faculty responsible. We will establish the culpability of the gang and interrogation will give us the extent of damage to the examination system,’’ Sharma says.

The CBI is examining the possibility that the question papers may have been sold to Ranjit’s gang from the printing press concerned.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More