Nine people have been arrested in Hyderabad for their alleged involvement in leaking question papers set by the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC). Among the arrested were two TSPSC employees and a police constable. The accused were charged with stealing and leaking the question papers for monetary benefits.
The deputy commissioner of police (Southwest Hyderabad), Kiran Khare, said that a complaint was received on March 11 from the assistant secretary (administration) at TSPSC, and the police charged the arrested accused for their role in the data breach. Four pen drives, seven mobile phones, three laptops, an iPad, and a desktop computer were seized from them.
The main accused, Pulidindi Praveen Kumar, 32, was an assistant section officer at TSPSC since 2017, and Atla Rajasekhar Reddy, 35, worked as a network expert on an outsourcing basis as part of the team provided by Telangana State Technology Services since November 2017.
According to police investigations, a government Hindi teacher, Renuka, and her husband, Lavdyavath Dakhya, from Mahaboobnagar offered Praveen Rs 10 lakh in return for leaking the question papers. Praveen then allegedly roped in Rajasekhar and stole the data from TSPSC, transferred it to a pen drive, took prints of question papers for the post of assistant engineer (civil), and shared the general studies paper on March 2.
Before this incident, Renuka’s brother Rajeshwar Nayak had started scouting for prospective buyers of question papers and contacted Medchal police constable Kethavath Srinivas, who was preparing for recruitment exams. Srinivas showed no interest as he was preparing for police recruitment for the post of sub-inspector, but he directed Rajeshwar to Nilesh Nayak and Gopal Nayak, who were preparing for the AE (civil) exam. The accused took Rs 13.5 lakh from them with an assurance of providing the question paper.
The police found that Dhakya and Rajeshwar gave the question paper to Nilesh and Gopal, confined them to their homes, and escorted them to the examination centre on March 5. Around 25,000 aspirants took this exam on the day.
All nine accused were booked under sections 409, 420, 120 (B) of the Indian Penal Code, Sec 66 (b) (c) & 70 of the IT Act, and section 8 of the Prevention of Examinations Malpractices Act.