Complicit officials, fragile supply chain, gangs on the lookout — anatomy of a paper leak

In part 1 of a series on paper leaks, ThePrint looks at how clandestine operations involving various players have evolved over decades & what investigation in major cases revealed.

Illustration: Prajna Ghosh/ThePrint

New Delhi: In the evenings of 2 and 3 May 1997, a group of engineering aspirants huddled at a coaching centre to solve a set of questions. The physics, chemistry and maths (PCM) papers of IIT-JEE were scheduled for 3 and 4 May. It turned out that the “special class” featured “shorthand” versions of seven out of 17 questions from the Maths paper scheduled for 4 May.

The exam was cancelled, and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) began investigating the case. A probe revealed that the notes jotted down by the students were provided by someone who had prior access to the actual PCM question papers for IIT-JEE that year.

According to the CBI chargesheet, the probe revealed an alleged nexus between the printing press and a Lucknow-based coaching centre — Trivaag Coaching Centre.

Nearly 30 years and several paper leaks later, the modus operandi has grown far more sophisticated, with the advent of technology and the greater involvement of coaching institutes and consultancies.

Consider this: In September, the CBI booked not only a Russian hacker but also Affinity Education Pvt Ltd and its three directors, Siddharth Krishna, Vishwambhar Mani Tripathi, and Govind Varshney, in connection with the 2021 IIT-JEE leak case.

As many as 19 locations in multiple cities were raided by the CBI in its probe into the JEE (Mains) paper leak in which the three — along with alleged associates and touts — were charged with manipulating the exam.

For the first time, foreign involvement was found in such a case, and that too in an entrance test of this level. Later, the CBI informed the court that 800-plus candidates benefited from Russian national Mikhail Shargin’s hacking of the iLeon software platform.

This is a growing, busy and bustling industry stemming from the demand for a secure job or guaranteed career after graduating from a reputed institute as a doctor or an engineer.

The issue of paper leaks and compromised exams has turned into a nationwide menace, affecting lakhs of students appearing for recruitment and entrance examinations.

Each round of paper leaks means candidates going through excruciating spells of exam cancellations, postponements, and re-tests. In Bihar, more than 5 lakh candidates were affected after a teacher recruitment examination was cancelled this year, while an equal number of candidates were left in the lurch after syndicates got hold of the papers of the 2022 senior grade teacher and the 2021 sub-inspector and platoon commander recruitment exams.

Over the past five years, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Gujarat have reported multiple paper leaks. Such was their extent that it became an election issue in these states. The tentacles of the gangs have also spread to Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh, among others.

In the ongoing NEET controversy, the National Testing Agency (NTA) first outright denied there had been leaks despite the future of 20 lakh-plus medical aspirants being on the line. As controversy refused to die down despite several assurances from the NTA and the education minister, the CBI was directed to probe the allegations of the NEET question paper being leaked as well as the appearance of UGC-NET questions on the dark web.

In part 1 of this series, ThePrint looks at the various modus operandi, key players and what probes in the big cases have revealed.

Evolution of cheating & key characters

The plot behind a paper leak begins at coaching centres and overseas consultancy service providers. Often, these offenders are those who lure candidates with the promise to help them clear the exams at any cost.

For instance, the Gujarat Police found that a Vadodara coaching centre-cum-consultancy service provider was at the heart of the paper leak in which 17 NEET aspirants were allegedly aided by the exam centre’s superintendent and teachers deployed on invigilation duty. Each student allegedly paid Rs 10 lakh.

“People consider this money they pay to buy the question papers to be a bribe and think they can recover it and more once they get into a job, whether through recruitment exams or as a doctor or an engineer from a reputed institute,” says a Gujarat Police officer.

Right from planting moles in the ‘safe rooms’ and sourcing papers from the printing press and courier units; to deploying teachers, ghost solvers, hackers, and third-party exam conductors; as well as cases of those setting papers leaking the blueprints with the complicity of top officials — paper leaks have reached new levels of operations.

According to investigators, the nexus might vary from case to case, but the key players remain the same — the people who leak the paper, solvers, and students who pay for their services.

“Since 1997, paper leaks and (methods to) compromise systems have evolved. If earlier, the paper was given to one student as a Xerox, it now reaches more students through social media tools at a much faster rate. Due to this aspect, the market has also increased,” says a senior Rajasthan Police officer.

According to investigators, the breaches are “simple” but the loopholes in the system remain unfixed.

“There are flaws in the system. Safe rooms aren’t safe enough. The accused are entering strongrooms and scanning question papers. Coaching centres have tie-ups with city coordinators and superintendents of exam centres. This needs to be treated as an organised racket even if some of these are state exams because all these syndicates are of inter-state gang members. There are big players involved,” a senior Bihar police officer says.

Cheating is not new, says a Delhi Police officer. “But most of the time, they go unnoticed. Over time, cheating has unrolled into manipulations, leaks and other forms of compromise. The fundamentals, however, are the same,” adds the officer.

Hackers up the game

A relatively new trend in the clandestine operation of leaking papers is the hacking of online software used for various entrance and recruitment tests.

Russian national Mikhail Shargin allegedly hacked iLeon software to gain remote access to the 2021 IIT-JEE questions, following which solvers and co-accused ‘assisted’ more than 820 students. For this assistance, Kanpur-based private firm Affinity Education Pvt Ltd allegedly charged each of the candidates around Rs 10 lakh to Rs 15 lakh.

The Delhi Police’s cyber cell unit arrested several suspects including Raj Teotia, who is also an accused in the IIT-JEE case. Teotia and others — part of a three-part module from Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Rajasthan — allegedly employed Russian hackers.

Russian hackers have allegedly aided candidates in a wide variety of competitive exams, ranging from the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) to the Indian Air Force and Navy exams. They charged Rs 3 to 5 lakh per candidate, according to the police.

‘From truck drivers, courier boys to printing press’

If a select few officials are hand in glove with paper leak gangs, courier companies that deliver question sets are equally involved in such irregularities. Take the case of the Bihar Public Service Commission’s (BPSC) Teacher Recruitment Examination that was cancelled this year due to tip-offs about a paper leak.

A gang allegedly run by ‘kingpin’ Shiv Kumar, whose father Sanjeev Kumar’s name has surfaced in the ongoing NEET controversy, got the information that question papers were to be transported by the DTDC. The courier company had hired vehicles from Shrinivas Chowdhary, a vendor who booked vehicles from Zenith Logistics Private Ltd.

Investigators said that Shiv Kumar’s gang lured Zenith’s accountant Rahul Paswan and that he was used to rope in Chowdhary.

A probe revealed that no sooner had the truck driver parked the vehicle carrying the question papers outside a roadside restaurant in Nagarnausa, Nalanda district, than Shiv Kumar’s gang members allegedly opened the box inside with a specialised tool and scanned the question papers.

This happened 12 March, three days before the exam. Such was the planning that ‘clients’ were made to memorise the question papers at a banquet hall in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh, the investigation found.

The name of Zenith Logistics figures in another case: The examination for the recruitment of constables in the Bihar Police, conducted by the Central Selection Board of Constables, was scheduled on 1, 7 and 15 October last year. However, the exam was cancelled after answer keys went viral on social media hours before the test.

The Economic Offences Unit (EOU) probe found that DP World was given the contract for transporting question papers, which was outsourced to Zenith Logistics for transportation of questions to all districts and centres in Bihar. The EOU has found that trucks containing question papers for constable recruitment exams were parked for six hours in Patna, and question papers were leaked as in the BPSC teacher’s exam.

The EOU, so far, has arrested more than 200 people, while Sanjeev Kumar is suspected to be behind this leak as well.

Similarly, the EOU suspects that NEET question papers were compromised while being transported from Ranchi to Hazaribagh by courier. The case was transferred to the CBI. Meanwhile, NEET PG exams have also been postponed.

The same strategy was also adopted in the UP Police constable recruitment paper leak of 2024 in which the investigating team found that employees of TCI Express — the company responsible for transporting exam papers — were allegedly involved as part of a module.

According to senior police officers, a system is in place to ensure that the trucks or other courier service vehicles carrying the exam question papers aren’t breached. Investigators also say the epicentre of the mismanagement and the breaching starts more often in the process of selection and allotment of centres and the printing press.

“The trucks have to be tracked through GPS, and there are heavy zipper locks with either a QR code or an inscribed code so that they cannot be meddled with or replaced. These locks can only be cut on reaching the destination on the designated date. The GPS tag will alert the authorities if there is any rerouting. Moreover, the boxes are to be sealed in tamper proof material. Generally, only an SDM-rank officer can receive the courier and it is directly sent to the strongroom,” a senior UP Police officer said.

In some other cases like in the Gujarat Subordinate Service Selection (GSSSB) exam of 2021 or the Uttar Pradesh Review Officer/Assistant Review Officer (Preliminary) exam 2024, the leaks took place from the printing press itself.

The police filed a 14,000-page chargesheet naming the Surya Offset Printing Press supervisor as the key accused in the GSSSB paper leak. In the second case, Sunil Raghuvanshi, a mechanical engineer, allegedly entered the printing press on the pretext of carrying out repairs. According to the Special Task Force (STF), Raghuvanshi hid the question paper inside a bottle. The paper was then solved in a hotel in Bhopal.

The Uttar Pradesh government blacklisted Edutest — the company responsible for printing the exam papers — after the UP Police constable recruitment leak case this year. The UP STF had summoned the firm’s owner, Vineet Arya, but he fled to the US.

Not so ‘strong’ rooms & complicity at top

One of the recurring points in these irregularities is the collusion of officials with the gangs involved in such illegal activities. No other case highlights this fact better than the 2013 Vyapam scam of Madhya Pradesh. Those arrested include former MP education minister Lakshmikant Sharma, and Vyapam controller of exams Pankaj Trivedi. Sharma was later given a clean chit by the CBI in 2019.

In two of Rajasthan’s major paper leaks in the last five years, the questions were leaked from the exam centres a few hours before the test, allegedly thanks to an understanding between officials and the syndicates.

Rajasthan Public Service Commission member Babulal Katara, his nephew Vijay, and a driver with the commission were among dozens arrested in the December 2022 RPSC senior teacher paper leak. Katara was allegedly responsible for acquiring the question papers, which were circulated by another accused, Sher Singh.

The Enforcement Directorate said that questions were leaked to approximately 150 candidates in Udaipur and 30 candidates in Jaipur. The candidates reportedly paid Rs 8 lakh to Rs 10 lakh each.

As for the 2021 Rajasthan sub-inspector and platoon commanders recruitment paper leak case in which the chargesheet was filed last month, the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the Rajasthan Police details how a gang run by history-sheeter Jagdish Bishnoi allegedly compromised the ‘strongroom’ in coordination with the centre’s superintendent.

The SOG’s 2,000-plus page chargesheet mentions that the superintendent, Rajesh Khandelwal, deployed Bishnoi’s aide Shivratan Mote as a peon at the centre. Another aide, Bhambhu, was allowed to hide inside the principal’s chamber, which doubled up as the strongroom to store question papers.

According to the SOG, Khandelwal confessed to taking Rs 10 lakh from Bishnoi. He facilitated Bhambhu’s access to the ‘strongroom’ and locked it from outside, allowing him to unseal the envelopes containing question papers and get them to Bishnoi.

According to SOG, Mote, Bhambhu, and Bishnoi employed the same tactic in the 2020 recruitment examination for junior engineers. They colluded with the centre superintendent of another government school in Jaipur and circulated the question papers to their clients.

Similarly, the question papers of the 2023 recruitment examinations for executive engineers and divisional accounts officers conducted by the Telangana State Public Service Commission were leaked by the TSPSC secretary’s personal assistant.

According to the Special Investigation Team (SIT) chargesheet, the accused conspired with another TSPSC employee to download question papers into a pen drive and shared them with aspirants in lieu of money.

The chargesheet claimed that question papers for the assistant executive engineer (AEE) posts were leaked to seven candidates, while those for assistant engineer (AE) posts were leaked to 13 candidates and those for divisional accounts officer (DAO) were handed to seven aspirants.

In another instance allegedly involving a government official, Mohammad Shamim, an undersecretary working at the Jharkhand assembly, was arrested in February in the 2023 Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC) paper leak case. The police also picked up his two sons. Sources in Jharkhand Police have said that Sanjeev Kumar is a “prime suspect” in this paper leak case as well.

Although the source of the leak remains unidentified, the Jharkhand Police told ThePrint that Shamim abused his official position to gain access to the question papers. All seven accused are in jail, according to a source in the Jharkhand Police.

“Even in modules where people are not leaking the question itself, abuse of power and compromise at the top level can’t be ruled out. How do the gangsters who operate in this module get information about the printing press, transportation modes among others?” asks a senior police officer.

(Edited by Tony Rai)