Junior clerk recruitment exam: 15 accused in paper leak case remanded to 11 days in custody

The Gujarat Panchayat Service Selection Board (GPSSB) postponed the recruitment exam after the paper leak was confirmed.

The ATS that raided a Vadodara-based institute to bust the gang involved in paper leak of the recruitment examination for the post of junior clerks, informed the court on Monday that it was “crucial to probe the role of out of state actors” as at least nine of the 15 arrested are from outside Gujarat.

The ATS also emphasised that two accused — Ketan Barot and Bhaskar Chaudhary — were previously arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a 2019 case of manipulating an online entrance examination of BITS, Pilani.

The 15 accused remanded to 11 days in police custody are Pradeep Nayak, Ketan Barot, Bhaskar Chaudhary, Murari Kumar Videshi Paswan, Kamlesh Chaudhary, Mohammed Firoz Alam, Sarvesh Kumar, Mintu Kumar Rai, Mukesh Kumar, Prabhat Kumar, Aniket Bhatt, Raj Barot, Pranay Sharma, Hardik Sharma and Naresh Mohanty.

According to the ATS, it was Nayak, who came to the office of Stakewise Technologies run by Chaudhary on January 28 night. The ATS, along with the Vadodara Special Operations Group (SOG) had been waiting for three days, officials said.

Gujarat ATS Chief Deepan Bhadran told this newspaper, “The ATS received a tip-off about manipulation and paper leak… some tip offs are also related to the demand for money in lieu of manipulation of exams… On the intervening night of Sunday, we nabbed Pradeep Nayak when he arrived at the Stakewise office with a copy of the original paper.”

Bhadran added that among the grounds stated in the remand application submitted by the ATS in the court, is also the involvement of the accused in paper leaks in other states of the country.

Bhadran said, “The role of the out of state actors needs to be probed thoroughly… The involvement of other persons as well as the involvement of the current accused in previous paper leaks as well as leaks they might have been planning. Barot and Chaudhary knew each other and were also arrested by the CBI in 2019…”

Police also informed the court that the recovery of incriminating documents and digital evidence in the case is imperative as the “future of 9.5 lakh aspirants had been toyed with” by the accused.

Chaudhary, who is the MD of Pathway Education Service as well as Stakewise Technologies, has been stationed in Vadodara for around a decade and is involved in coaching and organising competetive exams. His firm was one of the two centres in Vadodara for the JEE exams to be held on February 1. Chaudhary’s arrest has left about 1,000 students, who were to appear for the JEE exams through his centre, in a lurch.

According to officials, Chaudhary, an IIM Lucknow alumnus of 2005, was also a student of the Faculty of Technology of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Vadodara in 1993. He quit his job as Principal Researcher in Steel Authority of India and started call centre business. Officials said later he joined with organised gangs involved in exam malpractices.