8 held for sharing and copying answers of forest guard recruitment exam

Police have detained eight people, including three examinees, in Gujarat’s Mehsana district for allegedly sharing and copying the answers of the state forest guard recruitment exam, an official said on Monday.

The examination was conducted by the Gujarat University on behalf of the state forest department on Sunday between 12 noon and 2 pm.

Mehsana Superintendent of Police Parthrajsinh Gohil said it was not a ”paper leak” case and the incident was limited to just one examination centre here. An employee of the examination centre at a school in Unava village here clicked a picture of the question paper of an absent candidate soon after the exam started, he said.

Some of the accused persons huddled to solve the questions in a room at the same centre while the exam was underway. They then allegedly shared the answers with three candidates, as pre-planned, the official said.

”They managed to solve 44 out of 100 questions and then shared the answers with three candidates. They also shared the answers with a fourth candidate to silence him, as he had during a toilet break seen them sharing the answers with other examinees,” he said.

Later, another examinee found this fourth candidate cheating from the answer key and informed the exam supervisor, who then alerted police, he said.

”This is not a case of question paper leak in advance or selling it for a price. The mischief was done by a teacher at the exam centre after the test started,” he said.

The police have registered an FIR against eight people, including the school employees and candidates who tried to benefit from this, under Indian Penal Code Sections 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy), 406 and 409 (dealing with criminal breach of trust) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), and provisions of the Information Technology Act.

”All the eight accused have been detained,” Gohil said.

On Sunday, the opposition Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Gujarat accused the state BJP government of failing to ensure fair conduct of the examination.

State Education Minister Jitu Vaghani had on Sunday said as per primary information received by him, it was a case of copying at the exam centre in Mehsana’s Unava village.