Around four months after question papers for examination of BBA and B.Com courses of Saurashtra University (SU) were allegedly leaked, the university filed a complaint Wednesday alleging the papers were leaked from HN Shukla College (HNSC) run jointly by BJP leader Nehal Shukla and Mehul Rupani. Police have booked an HNSC employee who had received the papers. Denying the allegations, Shukla, the president of the college, claimed that his institute was being made a scapegoat by SU’s in-charge Vice-Chancellor (VC) Prof Girish Bhimani who, the BJP leader said, couldn’t stand him politically. Amit Parekh, the acting registrar of the SU, filed a complaint with Gandhigram police station at around 11 pm on Wednesday. In his complaint, Parekh stated that one Jigar Bhatt of HNSC had received question papers for semester-5 examinations of BBA and B.Com on behalf of that college on October 12 last year. Hours later, someone had dropped a photocopy of the BBA paper in the Rajkot office of vernacular daily Gujarat Samachar and another copy of B.Com paper in the office of Divyabhaskar, another Gujarati paper being published from Rajkot. After Gujarat Samachar informed Bhaktinagar police station about the copy of the question paper which was to be administered on October 13, police had, informed the SU staff. Meanwhile, Divyabhaskar had published a news story in its October 13 edition, claiming the paper of B. Com had been leaked. After this, the university had replaced the BBA paper while postponing B.Com examination while summoning packets of the original question paper sets it had sent to colleges. Meanwhile, based on an application given by Nilesh Soni, the controller of examination of the SU, Bhaktinagar police had launched a probe. Quoting a report of the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), Rajkot, the registrar stated in his complaint that when the university called back packets of questions papers on October 13, red-coloured seals of packets received back from HNSC were found to be tampered with. The FIR, filed on the basis of the complaint, records the tampered seals were found to have been covered with transparent plastic tape. On the basis of the SU’s complaint, Gandhigram police booked Bhatt under IPC sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 409 (criminal breach by public servant, banker, merchant or agent), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 120B (criminal conspiracy). “Bhatt had received packets of question papers and he was the custodian of them. The FSL report found that seals of packets delivered to the HN Shukla College were tampered with, suggesting question papers were leaked from there. Therefore, he has been booked,” Raju Bhargav, Commissioner of Rajkot city police told The Indian Express. SS Rana, police inspector of Gandhigram, said that no one had been detained or arrested in this connection. Meanwhile, Shukla, who is a BJP corporator in Rajkot Municipal said, “The process of handing over question paper packets was videographed by the university. For two days after the question papers were returned, the then registrar maintained in his interactions with the media that all packets were found intact. The FIR nowhere mentions this videography. And why did the univesity keep the question papers in the old office of controller of examination where there is no video-surveillance,” Shukla said. He suggested that the seals of the packets of his college were tampered with after HNSC returned them to the SU. “It was done as part of a conspiracy to malign the image of our college. It was done to cover the failure of the in-charge VC after the paper got leaked and we were made scapegoat,” Shukla said, adding he would file defamation suits against the acting registrar and the university. Prof Bhimani said that the paper leak was an attempt to hinder its “flight of development” of SU and claimed that there was no politics behind it. Mehul Rupani, former member of SU executive council and a trustee of HNSC, refused to comment, saying Shukla had already said what the college had to say.
