A group of students on Saturday staged a demonstration near the headquarters of the Central Board of Secondary Education in New Delhi’s Preet Vihar locality in protest against the leak of Class 10 mathematics and Class 12 economics question papers, PTI reported.
“The students tried to block the road in front of the CBSE office, but we kept them away,” a senior Delhi Police officer said. “A group of about 25 to 30 students are protesting outside the CBSE office.”
A 16-year-old student from West Delhi appearing for his Class 10 board exams had informed CBSE Chairperson Anita Karwal about the leak of the maths question paper, the Hindustan Times reported.
Karwal received a complaint on her official email address at 1.39 am on Wednesday – the day the exam was conducted – from the student, who urged her to cancel the exam. However, she saw the email at 8.55 am, just before the exam, which could not be stopped without having the information verified first, School Education Secretary Anil Swarup said on Friday.
“My son got the mathematics question paper on WhatsApp from a friend,” the teenager’s father told the Hindustan Times. “He seemed worried and told me he would inform CBSE and get the exam cancelled.” He said his son wrote the email “in good faith” and would cooperate with the investigation, but the police had not approached him so far.
A tutor in Delhi’s Madipur locality, Chandan Gupta, also informed the police at 10.40 pm on Tuesday, the day before the exam, after receiving a message from one of his students that purportedly contained nine questions from the mathematics paper, DNA reported. The police then visited Gupta and took him away for questioning. He was let off on Wednesday.
One of the FIRs registered in the case has revealed that the CBSE had received an email containing photos of a handwritten question paper set on Monday night, The Indian Express reported. The Delhi Police have sought Google’s help to find out the source of this email. The police have also approached cyber experts, apart from getting the help of its cyber unit.
“The IP logs have been uploaded to the CBSE server,” an unidentified official told The Indian Express. “An IP log analysis will have to be undertaken to ascertain the people who had logged into the server with admin logs. If any leak would have taken place, the logs should contain the information.”
Meanwhile, a group of students in Kolkata are planning to march in protest against the CBSE, frustrated with the leaks and its decision to conduct the Class 12 economics examination again on April 25, The Times of India reported. Students from all the major schools in the city and their parents are expected to participate in the rally.
“We have seen elders protesting against several issues by taking out processions,” Aniket Gupta, one of the organisers of the protest march, told the newspaper. “We plan to do the same. We want to raise our voice against the CBSE authority’s decision to conduct a re-test. They cannot punish us for some mischief by others.”
He and other students met a senior officer of the Kolkata Police’s south suburban division on Friday. “The official verbally agreed with the route but asked us to return on Saturday,” Gupta said.
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