BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Crime Branch on Sunday arrested vice-president of Board of Secondary Education (BSE), Odisha, Nihar Ranjan Mohanty in connection with Special Odisha Teacher Eligibility Test (OTET) question paper leak case.
The arrest came a day after he was summoned by the probe agency for questioning. With this, the number of arrests in the case has gone up to eight.
Among those arrested, a data entry operator of BSE, Jitan Moharana, had allegedly downloaded the question paper from the laptop of Mohanty before leaking it to others. Crime Branch DIG B Gangadhar had earlier said that the BSE vice-president had sent the manuscripts of the question papers to the printing press, which had resent the printed question papers to him for correction of any spelling mistake.
The investigating agency had attributed the leak to the BSE vice-president’s negligence as his failure to implement proper security measures allowed Moharana to access his laptop.
Besides Moharana, working president of State Ex-cadre Teachers’ Association Bijay Mishra and president of its Koraput unit Sanatan Bisoi were arrested on July 30 along with three brokers – Ramjee Prasad Gupta, Ajay Sahoo and Jayant Rout – to whom they sold the papers. A teacher from Kalahandi district, Prasant Kumar Khamari, who had handwritten question papers of OTET which were viral on different social media platforms, was nabbed on August 1.
The OTET for in-service primary and upper primary school teachers across the state was abruptly postponed just hours before the scheduled examination on July 20 after images of handwritten question papers began circulating on social media the previous evening. The decision left more than 75,000 candidates in shock and dismay.
On August 1, the board had officially announced that the Special OTET 2025 will now be conducted on August 31. The examination will be held in two sittings on the same day.