'Shoot the messenger': Yogi government's reaction to UP's exam paper leak

Arrest of journalists comes in the wake of similar instances, including S Kappan, who is still in jail, or journalists arrested for reporting Covid mismanagement in the state

The leakage of examination papers is nothing new to Uttar Pradesh, where the existence of an examination mafia has been an open secret for decades. However, what is new is the drastic police action against journalists who were responsible for exposing the racket now.

As many as three dozen people have been arrested in the case so far. These include three scribes who were put behind bars by the police on Friday(April 1) in Ballia, UP's remote eastern district along the Bihar border, where the most recent incident of leakage of Class 12 English paper was reported last week.

The sequence of events clearly reveals that Digvijay Singh, the local correspondent of popular Hindi daily Amar Ujala, carried the news in its edition the following day. Singh, who had exposed the paper leak in the newspaper, was intimidated by cops after they trapped him into sending a copy of the leaked examination question paper. They also took into custody another Amar Ujala journalist, Ajit Kumar Ojha, who had edited the report. That was followed by the arrest of Manoj Gupta, a local scribe working for Hindi daily Rashtriya Sahara, with whom Singh had allegedly shared the news.

According to other Ballia scribes, after the story was out in Amar Ujala, Digvijay Singh received a call on his mobile from senior officials of the district administration. They asked him to WhatsApp a picture of the leaked paper. And no sooner he did do so, cops knocked at his door and used the WhatsApp picture as evidence against the scribe to book him as an accomplice in the crime.

Digvijay Singh was questioned by the police, who subsequently picked up the two other journalists connected with him, and the three were sent to jail on the charge that they were also involved in the paper leak. The scribes' repeated plea and appeals to point out that they had only carried out their journalistic duty fell on deaf ears, and they were packed off to prison by the evening. Significantly, the news of the arrest of journalists did not find a place in much of the mainstream media – be it print or electronic.

Scribes see the arrests as an indirect warning to other intrepid journalists who believe in investigative journalism and consider it their primary duty to expose ills under any regime. "It is pretty evident that the Ballia administration is keener on dissuading the media from reporting misdeeds of officials involved in running the systems," observed senior journalist Alok Joshi, a former managing editor of CNBC Awaz news channel.

Sanjay Kapoor, general secretary of the Editors' Guild of India, felt that the action against the journalists was a part of the government's tendency to curb the freedom of the press. "Such tactics have been tried and practised in states like Kashmir where many journalists were similarly brought on their knees for reporting facts." He said the Editors' Guild would take up the matter with the government.

Meanwhile, the Special Task Force (STF), entrusted with the paper leak case, has managed to get many important leads and establish the nexus between officials and the organised gang involved in the leak. Besides the leak, the gang also provides paper solvers who sit down as imposters for the actual examinees, sources have said. According to reports, the STF sleuths have also traced the links between parents of examinees and certain coaching institutes believed to be neck-deep in the paper leak racket.

Strangely, the district magistrate of Ballia was still trying to wash his hands off the whole episode by claiming, "No examination paper got leaked in Ballia." Additional chief secretary (secondary education) Aradhana Shukla has also issued a clarification claiming "no tampering" of papers.

While UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed officials to invoke the National Security Act (NSA) against the accused, who are mostly teachers, there is no word yet from any government authority about the reason for the arrest of the journalists.

This is not the first time the UP government has acted arbitrarily against journalists. A Kerala-based scribe, S Kappan, was booked for mere apprehension of breach of peace while he was on his way to track the infamous Hathras gangrape incident in September 2020. Kappan is still in jail and has not been able to get bail so far.

During the peak of Covid-19, at least two scribes were jailed for highlighting the failures of the Yogi Adityanath administration in handling the woes of the common people. In 2021, a journalist was booked and arrested for showing videos of 'roti' being served with just salt in the name of the mid-day meal in a particular district. The district magistrate had gone to the extent of going on record to question the scribe, "Why did he make a video when he was a print journalist?"

Each of these cases reflects how the UP administration blatantly follows the principle of 'shooting the messenger'.

(The author is a journalist based in Lucknow)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.