Examiner will go to Nashik prison to enable 7/11 blast convict to give LL.B exam: Mumbai University to HC

Thereafter, Ansari approached the high court on May 10, raising grievance against the delay. The court enquired from Mumbai University if the examinations could be rescheduled for Ansari. The high court asked the university to consider if under peculiar circumstances and security concerns, examinations could be taken online.

After due deliberation with the prisons authorities and the Anti-Terrorism Squad officers, the lawyer representing Mumbai University told the bench that as a temporary arrangement, an examiner from the Siddharth Law College, Mumbai, can be sent to the Nashik Road Central Prison where Ansari is detained for his paper on ‘family law’ on June 12.

The lawyer added that the exam would be held in a separate room inside the prison and a digital copy of the question paper would be sent to the prison superintendent 15 minutes before the exam begins to enable him to take a printout.

After the exam is over, the answer sheet will be carried back to the college by the examiner. The public prosecutor representing the state submitted it will take care of security concerns and difficulties related to taking the convict to the exam centre.

When the university lawyer requested the court to not treat this as a precedent, the bench disagreed and opined that the suggestion in the present case could help prisoners who wanted to improve their educational qualifications without creating additional hassles and obligations on the prison authorities.

The bench also asked the Bar Council of India to come up with a mechanism so that various universities can hold exams in jail and applications need not be filed every time and posted the next hearing to July 1.