Over 48 lakh candidates appeared in the exam on Feb 17, 18 across UP
The UP Police’s Special Task Force cracked the constable recruitment exam paper leak case and identified the source of the leak. Three men – Abhishek Shukla, Shivam Giri, and Rohit Pandey – have been arrested in the case.
According to the STF’s investigation, the leak happened when the question papers were brought to a warehouse in Ahmedabad.
Ahmedabad cropped up on police’s radar after they arrested Mahendra Sharma, an aide of Delhi police constable Vikram Pahel.
An Ahmedabad-based firm was tasked with printing the question papers, while transport firm TCI was entrusted with getting them to UP before the exam.
However, soon after the exam was held in four shifts on February 17 and February 18, allegations of a paper leak surfaced, prompting the state government to cancel the exam.
How The Accused Accessed Box With The Question Papers
The arrested accused – Shivam Giri, Rohit Pandey – are employees of TCI. While Abhishek was an ex-employee.
Question papers were picked up from the printing press by TCI and stored in sealed trunks.
In March 2022, Abhishek came in contact with one Ravi Attri, the alleged mastermind, through one Ankit Mishra who acted as an agent between the two.
Attri told Abhishek that if he managed to get the question paper of some exams, he would get a lot of money and wouldn’t have to work for even a day. A government job could also be arranged, Abhishek was told.
In July 2023, Ravi meets Abhishek and they planned to get their hands on the question paper. Three months later in November, Ravi and Abhishek offered Shivam Giri Rs 5 lakh to leak the paper and Rs 15 lakh to Rs 20 lakh after everything was smoothly done.
On February 2, Shivam called Abhishek and informed him that the question papers for the UP Police’s constable exam could come soon.
Abhishek asked him for a picture of the boxes and the next day, Shivam sent Abhishek the photo of the boxes with two codes of
paper.
On February 5, Rajiv Narayan Mishra, who is an accused in another paper leak case in Madhya Pradesh, came from Bhopal and met Ravi and others in his car.
Subsequently, Shubham Mandal, an expert in breaking sealed boxes was called in from Patna for the task and getting the question papers out.
The same day, Abhishek, Ravi, Rajiv Narayan Mishra, and Mandal met Shivam and Rohit at 11:30 pm near the TCI’s warehouse in Ahmedabad’s Kheda.
Rohit, Shivam, and Mandal went inside the warehouse and identified a blind spot – a place that was beyond the CCTV camera’s field of vision. The trunks were taken to a cabin, where Shubham broke into them, took out the papers, clicked pictures, and placed them back in. Since the boxes were sealed in the front, Shubham had to break the lock from behind.
Shivam was paid around Rs 3 lakh for this.
On February 7, another paper code came in. The team reconvened and planned to do it again. But this time, they couldn’t break into the warehouse since there were a lot of people present. They headed back to their hotel in Naroda.
The next day, they tried again for the third code and managed to do it. The same drill was repeated, and Shivam was paid Rs 2.5 lakh from different bank accounts.
Ravi Attri then distributed the paper to nine others, including those associated with the mass cheating case in Haryana. Vikram Pahal arranged thousands of students for the mass cheating.
On March 5, when Shivam travelled to Ghaziabad to meet Ravi, he
and Abhishek were caught by the police.
Police are still looking for Ravi Attri and Rajiv Narayan Mishra – the
key masterminds behind the case.
The UP government cancelled the police constable recruitment examination following allegations of question paper leak and ordered a re-test within six months. The state government announced a probe into the allegations by the STF.
More than 48 lakh candidates appeared in the examination on February 17 and February 18 across the state.
