Three arrested for trying to leak ONGC question papers

 Three men, including the vice principal of a private school in Uttam Nagar, have been arrested on Sunday for their alleged involvement in an attempted leak of question papers of exams conducted by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) for postgraduate level trainees.

Police recovered from the possession of the accused a set of original question papers as well as photocopies of the same.

The leaked question papers were to be sold to potential candidates for Rs 3-4 lakh each, police said on Sunday.

Two of the accused had taken Rs 50,000 in advance from a client, who was among the arrested.

The arrested vice principal was the custodian of the recovered original question papers. The school he worked for was among the centres chosen by the ONGC for conducting its examination. The other arrested accused were identified as Ashutosh Sharma and Tarun.

Police learnt on Saturday that Tarun and the vice principal of the school would leak the question paper.

They had precise information that the accused would assemble near a school in west Delhi, and they would be in possession of the original question papers.

“We conducted a raid and arrested all the three men and seized an Ecosport car from them. Apart from the car and the original question papers, two photocopies of two sets were recovered from them,” a senior officer of the Crime Branch of Delhi Police, which made the arrests, said.

Gupta was allegedly in possession of the original question paper at the time of the arrests. He was trying to re-seal the question booklets with an adhesive.

At lest Rs 50,000 was recovered from Ashutosh, who allegedly came to buy the papers as per the deal.

Investigation revealed that ONGC had outsourced the contract for conducting the examination to a Bangalore based company, the officer said.

Last year, question papers were delivered to the centres early in the morning on the day of the examination. But technical problems had led to the question papers not reaching the centres on time, resulting in chaos.

Having learnt from the experience, the organisers decided to deliver the question papers to the respective centres on the previous evening of the examination.

Police said investigations revealed that the vice principal was approached by Tarun, who runs a coaching centre for students seeking admission in BEd courses.

Tarun was earlier approached by Ashutosh, who requested for arrangement of the question papers for one of his acquaintances.