Ludhiana, March 31
The Punjab Police achieved a major breakthrough in the Punjab School Education Board paper leakage case today with the arrest of eight persons, including a government school principal and a student.
The arrested persons are Ram Lal, Principal of Government Senior Secondary School, Mangat village, Amarjit Singh, peon in the same school, Sukhdial Chand of Bajra village, Sukhwinder Singh alias Kaka of Meharban village, Makhan Singh of Rajesh Nagar in Haibowal, Roshan Lal of the same area and Ashwini Kumar of New Vishnu Puri, Shivpuri Road.
Giving this information Mr Narinder Pal Singh, SSP, Ludhiana, said the principal had authorised a Punjabi teacher of the school to collect the bundles of question papers from Government Senior Secondary School, Bharat Nagar, on February 28. The
teacher collected the bundles and took it to her home.
On the same day at 6:30 pm, the principal, his nephew Sukhdial Chand, Amarjit, peon in the school, and Sukhwinder Singh collected the bundles from the teacher’s house in the car of Sukhdial Chand. Sukhdial Chand told the principal, his uncle, that he would first have to go to his in-laws place in Haibowal for a small piece of work.
Sukhdial reached Haibowal where his brother-in-law, Makhan, a Plus-Two student of Mangat school, was already present. Roshan Lal, father of Makhan’s classmate, reached his house and insisted that all of them should come to his house, which was next door.
All the four went to Roshan Lal’s home where they were served liquor. Soon, Sukhwinder Singh, Makhan and his classmate Rohit, son of Roshan Lal, sneaked out of the house and went to Makhan’s place. There they took out bundles of Class X mathematics and social studies question papers and Plus-Two English, History and Political Science question papers from Sukhdial Chand’s car. With a fine wire, they opened all the bundles and took out one question paper each.
With the question papers thus obtained, Rohit and Makhan went to a nearby shop and got photostat copies of all the papers. After that they put the papers back in the bundles and sealed them again. In the meantime, Roshan Lal and Sukhdial Chand kept the principal and his peon busy. Sukhdial Chand asked Roshan Lal to drop the principal and peon at their place.
Sukhdial Chand obtained the photocopies of the question papers and went back to his place. The principal then kept the bundles of question papers in his school and handed these one by one to the Superintendent Gursharanjit on the days of the examination.
On March 12, Sukhdial Chand took the copies of the question papers to a clerk, Ashwini Kumar, who worked in the election office and got these copied further on the official photostat machine so that these could be sold in the market. The clerk kept a copy of these papers with him as his niece was also taking the Class X examination.
The papers were sold in the market at a price as high as Rs 1000 initially. The same evening, several people started the business and many students were able to get the papers. Slowly, the price of the copies of question papers came down to Rs 3 each and almost all students were able to obtain a copy each. The SSP said inquiry was on and the police would soon catch hold of the culprits involved in the case.
