Bhubaneswar: Vice-President of the Board of Secondary Education (BSE) Nihar Ranjan Mohanty was placed under suspension following his arrest by the Crime Branch in connection with the Special Odisha Teacher Eligibility Test (OTET) question paper leak case.
The suspension was ordered by BSE President, Srikant Tarai, following Mohanty’s arrest on Sunday.
Sources said the Crime Branch has launched a probe into Mohanty’s financial transactions and is planning to take him on remand. The agency has been probing the case since the question paper leak was reported, and Mohanty’s arrest is a significant breakthrough in the investigation.
Meanwhile, President of the BSE Srikant Tarai has also been interrogated by the Crime Branch four times in connection with the case.
Notably, the Crime Branch on Sunday arrested Nihar Ranjan Mohanty in connection with Special OTET question paper leak case. The arrest came a day after he was summoned by the probe agency for questioning. With this, the number of arrests in the case has gone up to eight.
Among those arrested, a data entry operator of BSE, Jitan Moharana, had allegedly downloaded the question paper from the laptop of Mohanty before leaking it to others. Crime Branch DIG B Gangadhar had earlier said that the BSE vice-president had sent the manuscripts of the question papers to the printing press, which had resent the printed question papers to him for correction of any spelling mistake.
The investigating agency had attributed the leak to the BSE vice-president’s negligence as his failure to implement proper security measures allowed Moharana to access his laptop.
Besides Moharana, working president of State Ex-cadre Teachers’ Association Bijay Mishra and president of its Koraput unit Sanatan Bisoi were arrested on July 30 along with three brokers – Ramjee Prasad Gupta, Ajay Sahoo and Jayant Rout – to whom they sold the papers. A teacher from Kalahandi district, Prasant Kumar Khamari, who had handwritten question papers of OTET which were viral on different social media platforms, was nabbed on August 1.