Cops suspect govt official leaked question paper of constable exam

Leak happened in Kalaburagi; no re-exam unless many benefited

Investigation into the leak of question paper of the examination for the posts of civil constables—held on November 16—has hinted at possible involvement of a government official.

Confirming the leak of the question paper on the day of the exam, ADGP (Crime and Technical Services and additional charge of Recruitment and Training) N S Megharikh on Wednesday said that a decision on re-examination would be taken if the number of beneficiaries of the answer keys—prepared after reading through the question paper—crossed the double digit.

A total of 83,166 candidates attended the examination for 6,609 posts of civil constables at 175 centres across Karnataka.

Police in Kalaburagi arrested three people—Kashinath, Mallanna and Shivakumar—a day after the exam and seized a sheet of paper with 77 answer keys, written by hand.

The OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) paper had 100 questions. The answers matched with the answer keys, though not in the serial order of the question paper sets given to the candidates, police found.

The three suspects were later produced before the court in Kalaburgi and remanded in police custody. Mallanna is a part-time teacher.

Megharikh said re-examination would be ordered only if many candidates had benefited from the leak.

“If the number of beneficiaries is not large, we will disqualify the suspected candidates and go ahead with the selection process,” he explained.

“But if the leak has spread beyond Kalaburagi, we will have to order re-examination. The investigation is heading at the right direction and we suspect the involvement of some officer responsible of the custody of the question papers.”

Interestingly, the suspects who opened the question paper did not touch the questions about mathematics.

According to Megharikh, the answer key has not been announced after the exam in view of the paper leak. Police have a strong suspicion that the sealed question paper was opened somewhere before the stipulated time, 11 am. There were five sets of papers with same questions in different order.

“It was our own constable deputed at Gulbarga University who received credible information that someone had promised the answer keys. Our personnel tried to reach the person, who promised to provide the answer key the next day. On the day of the exam, the Kalaburagi police managed to catch up with Kashinath, Mallanna and Shivakumar, whose relative is a candidate. But by then, the exam had begun and the suspects revealed the name of one Sahu, who runs a coaching institute in Kalaburagi,” Megharikh said.

The information was quickly flashed across and police tracked down Sahu in Bengaluru. He had reached the City in an SUV along with six candidates. After the exam, Sahu and the candidates headed back to Kalaburagi but were intercepted at the Nelamangala toll gate.

But Sahu sensed danger after he got repeated calls from the police decoy asking for answer keys. He quickly got down from the car much before the toll gate. But police managed to pick him up in the night.

“The investigation so far has revealed that the six candidates at a centre in Bengaluru had received the answer keys from Kalaburagi. Three other candidates, including the relative of Shivakumar, were also the beneficiaries,” Megharikh said.