Police have arrested the last two absconding suspects in the Maharashtra TET paper leak case. The breakthrough completes the roundup of all 18 chargesheeted accused and exposes a wider interstate exam fraud network.
In a breakthrough in the Maharashtra Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) question paper leak case, Bhiwandi Police have arrested two absconding suspects from Beed and Bihar, an officer said on Sunday. With the arrest of Prakash Misal and Ashok Sav, all 18 accused named in the chargesheet have now been arrested.
The investigation by Thane City Police and officers from Bhiwandi Division (Zone II) has uncovered a multi-state examination fraud network spread across Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. “The two suspects- Sav and Misal- were tracked down through technical intelligence, financial transaction trails, and location logs monitored by the police SIT,” the officer said.
The racket came to light a day before the examination scheduled on June 28, after Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone II) Pavan Bansod received a tip-off about three men trying to sell exam papers to a Bhiwandi resident. Police then laid a trap using decoy personnel in the Kongaon area, detained the suspects and seized four sets of question papers.
Police later verified the seized material with officials of the Maharashtra State Council of Examination (MSCE), who confirmed that it matched the actual question paper. According to the chargesheet filed by Thane Police, the papers were smuggled out of a printing press in Agra by two employees, who hid them inside shoe insoles for Rs 8,000.
The chargesheet, submitted before a local court in Bhiwandi on Friday, names 18 accused, including alleged mastermind Bijendra Gupta, who had earlier been implicated in an Odisha paper leak. The accused have been booked under relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) dealing with cheating, criminal breach of trust and criminal conspiracy, along with Maharashtra laws on examination malpractices and unfair means. With the latest arrests, all those named in the chargesheet are now in custody.
