Two IT coordinators from Kalyan college gave a photocopy of the paper to two students, who forwarded it to everyone on their WhatsApp group; cops now probing if more students were involved
Two students and two clerks of prominent colleges have been arrested for the leak of the Third Year (TY) BCom paper in Marketing and Human Resources Management (MHRM).
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mid-day report on April 5
Police arrested Raj Kumar Mishra and Rajendra Shankar Borade, Information Technology (IT) coordinators of K M Agarwal College in Kalyan, and students Vishal Vinod More of KM Agarwal College and Pratik Mehta of Birla College of Arts, Science and Commerce.
According to Senior Police Inspector of Crime Branch Deepak Patanagare, on April 5, the university had sent the question paper via email and passwords were emailed to college principals and IT coordinators around 9.30 pm, 1.5 hours before the paper.
As soon as Mishra received the password, he opened the question paper and made a copy, which he then handed over to Borade. The coordinator handed the copy to More, who forwarded it to every student in his Whatsapp group. “Mehta and More had paid Rs 3,000 to Borade and Mishra to leak the paper,” said Nandkishore More, senior police inspector of Cyber Crime Cell.
The student, More, confessed that he had met with an accident and was not able to study for the papers before the exam, and therefore decided to try and get his hands on the paper. The cops suspect a group of students to be involved in the leak and are now investigating if any other paper was leaked as well, that the university did not know about.
On April 4, Mumbai University found that the MHRM paper was circulating on Whatsapp, before the start of the exam. They immediately changed the paper; however, 210 centres could not get the revised set and three centres used the original paper.
“We started the investigation and inquired with people who received the paper on Whatsapp. After tracing several chains of users, we were able to nab the accused who had leaked the paper,” said Sadanand Date, joint commissioner of police, Mumbai Crime Branch.