Cuttack: The Orissa High Court has granted bail to former vice-president of Board of Secondary Education (BSE) Nihar Ranjan Mohanty and seven other accused in the Special Odisha Teacher Eligibility Test (OTET) question paper leak case.
Besides Mohanty, the court granted bail to data entry operator Jitan Moharana, Ramji Prasad Gupta, Bijaya Kumar Mishra, Jayanta Kumar Rout, Ajay Kumar Sahu, Prasant Kumar Khamari and Sanatan Bishoi.
While granting bail, the HC set conditions and directed the accused to cooperate with the investigating agency and not leave the country without permission.
The case relates to the alleged leak of the Special OTET examination question paper before the test
last year. While investigating the case, the Crime Branch had arrested the eight persons.
The investigators had gathered crucial information after interrogating the prime accused, Jitan Moharana and Bijaya Mishra. Moharana allegedly accessed the question papers from the laptop of the BSE vice-president using a pen drive before the examination.
He allegedly printed the papers and carried them to Nayagarh, where they were handed over to Mishra’s brother. Investigators said Mishra later transferred Rs 2.5 lakh to Moharana through UPI.
The leaked papers were later sent to Ambodala in Rayagada district. There, accused Prasant Kumar Khamari, a teacher at a government upper primary school in Bhejipadar near Bhawanipatna, reportedly translated the questions using Google Translate and rewrote them by hand to conceal the leak.
The Crime Branch had also questioned several others, including Mishra’s brother, the driver who accompanied Moharana and a woman data entry operator from the BSE vice-president’s office to ascertain how the laptop was accessed and why the activity went unnoticed.