Kataka: The Orissa High Court has granted interim protection against possible arrest to three suspended officers of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) in connection with the school textbook error case.
The relief was granted to Dilip Kumar Sahu, Pralipta Mishra and Bharati Tudu, three assistant directors of SCERT, who were suspended following the detection of 1,678 errors in new school textbooks for Class I to VIII.
The single judge bench of Justice V Narasingh granted the relief while considering separate anticipatory bail petitions filed by the three suspended SCERT officers.
The HC also called for the case diary from state Crime Branch and posted the anticipatory bail pleas to August 3 for further consideration. The interim protection shall continue till then.
Notably, the Odisha government had ordered a Crime Branch probe following the detection of the glaring factual, geographical and printing errors in the school textbooks. On July 13 a case was registered under sections 316(5), 201, 3(5), and 61(2) of the BNS, 2023.
During investigation, the Crime Branch teams had since seized key printing, tender, and manuscript documents from the SCERT, Odisha Textbook Preparation and Marketing (OTPM), and Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA) offices.
Former SCERT director Manoj Kumar Padhi has been arrested on charges of criminal negligence, conspiracy, and criminal breach of trust for approving print-ready manuscripts without factual verification.