Teacher, Wife Held For Primary School Question Paper Leak In Odisha

Bhubaneswar: An assistant teacher and his wife have been arrested by the police for allegedly leaking the question papers of Class 1 to 8 supplied by Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA) for the examinations.

The accused were identified as Jagannath Kar (29), an assistant teacher of Gopinath Jew Nodal Upper Primary School at Sridharpur in Jajpur district, and his wife Rutupurna Pati (27).

The arrest was made following investigation into a complaint lodged by the OSEPA Project Director on March 18, 2024 with the Cyber Crime and Economic Offences police station in Bhubananeswar. It was alleged that someone had leaked question papers of the Summative Assessment-II of class-1 to 8 supplied by OSEPA and uploaded on one YouTube channel namely “Samir Educational.”

In course of investigation, police got digital evidence, took the screenshot of the IP address and phone number used to open the YouTube channel ProAnswer, verified the place of stay and their profile and from the digital evidence collected it is well established that the accused persons have committed the offence, police said.

Accused Jagannath Kar and his wife Rutupurna Pati run a YouTube channel namely ProAnswer having 25.9 K subscribers and 103 videos uploaded. To gain YouTube subscriber, likes, share, popularity and to earn huge sum in short time from in furtherance of their common intention, they planned to upload the question and answer of the Summative Assessment Test of Class 1-8 question paper on their YouTube channel prior to the schedule date of the examinations which was supposed to be in confidential and in safe custody as it is valuable security of state.

On March 9, Jagannath Kar took the question paper on behalf of Head Mistress of Itara Primary School from the Cluster Research Centre Coordinator Gopinath Jew NUPS to his home. Kar and his wife then scanned the question through their mobile and on the same day and uploaded the same on their YouTube channel prior to examination scheduled on March 15, police said.

During investigation, previously one accused Samir Sahu (21) of Rambha area in Ganjam district was also arrested.

On further investigation it is ascertained that the question and answer paper was leaked first by the couple. Both have been apprehended and several articles, including two mobile phones, a laptop and nine answer paper as well as two bank passbooks seized from them.