Question paper leak: Telangana Governor seeks report from TSPSC

Hyderabad, March 14 (IANS) Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan on Tuesday directed the State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) to submit a report within 48 hours on the question paper leak.

Taking a serious note of the leakage of question papers for the exam conducted for recruitment to the posts of Assistant Engineer in various departments, she sought a detailed report from the Commission.

She also asked the TSPSC to suggest measures to prevent recurrence of such incidents in future.

Meanwhile, Hyderabad police have transferred the paper leakage case to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Central Crime Station (CCS). Police Commissioner C.V. Anand issued an order, transferring the case from Begumbazar Police Station to SIT CCS.

Additional Commissioner of Police, Crime and SIT, will supervise the investigation.

In another development, a city court on Tuesday sent nine accused in the case to judicial custody for 14 days.

A day after arresting the accused, the police produced them before a magistrate.

The accused include two employees of TSPSC and a police constable.

TSPSC Chairman Janardhan Reddy told reporters that they will take legal opinion on whether to cancel the exam or not.

The TSPSC had conducted the examination on March 5 for 833 vacancies of Assistant Engineer, Municipal Assistant Engineer, Technical Officer, and Junior Technical Officer in various engineering departments. A total of 55,000 candidates had written the exam.

The TSPSC Chairman said the Commission was betrayed by those who were trusted. Stating that five employees of TSPSC were involved in the case, he said they would be dismissed from service.

Janardhan Reddy appealed to people not to believe rumours being spread on social media. He clarified that none of his children appear for Group-I exams conducted by the Commission. He was responding to allegations that the Group-I exam paper was also leaked to help his children who wrote the exam.

The TSPSC Chairman said it is a fact that TSPSC employee P. Praveen Kumar, one of the accused arrested in the paper leak case, had appeared in Group-I Prelims but it was not correct that 103 marks secured by him were the highest.

The Commission had lodged a complaint with the police when its officials found that someone hacked the computer system in which the question papers were stored.

The accused allegedly copied folders containing question papers of various exams from computers in the confidential section. The Commission already postponed recruitment examinations to posts of Town Planning Building Overseer scheduled on March 12 and Veterinary Assistant Surgeon scheduled to be held on March 15 and 16.

Praveen Kumar, who was working as Assistant Section Officer in the TSPSC and Rajasekhar Reddy, a network expert working on outsourcing basis in the TSPSC had struck a deal for Rs 10 lakh with other accused to leak the question paper.