The police in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar arrested the principal in-charge of a college, who had been detained the previous day, Tuesday evening, hours after a FIR was registered against him and three students for allegedly leaking a question paper of the Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) course examination.
Amit Galani, principal in-charge of G L Kakadia College of Commerce and Management (GLKCCM), was arrested more than 24 hours after he was detained by police on Sunday following a complaint by Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University (MKBU). Ajay Ladumor and Vivek Makwana, both GLKCCM students, were arrested alongside the principal.
“We formally arrested the three at 6 pm on Tuesday after their reports for Covid-19 tests returned negative. We shall produce them before a magistrate later on Wednesday,” P D Parma, Police Inspector of the Neelam Bagu police station, said.
The FIR, which was filed in response to a complaint filed by MKBU registrar Kaushik Bhatt, also names Srushti Borda, a GLKCCM student, as an accused. The four accused have been charged with criminal breach of trust, criminal breach of trust by a public servant, criminal conspiracy, breach of confidentiality and privacy, disclosure of information in breach of lawful contract, and other offences under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 406, 409, 120B, 114, and 34, as well as Information Technology Act Sections 72 and 72A.
According to the FIR, Galani illegally tore open a packet of Finance Account XII (Management Accounting II) question papers for semester VI of the B.Com course hours before the exam, which was scheduled to begin at 3.30 p.m. on Saturday. He then took photos of the question paper on his phone and handed them over to Borda, a B.Com student at GLKCCM. Borda, for his part, asked Makwana to photograph the question papers from Galani’s phone.
“The investigation, so far, has revealed that Borda wanted to send a copy of the question paper to her friend Ladumore. But as she didn’t have a phone of her own, he asked Makwana, a student of the same college who was around that time, to do it on her behalf,” Parmar said.
However, Parmar said, Makwana didn’t have Ladumore’s contact number. “Therefore, he shared photos of the question paper he had clicked from the principal’s phone to his friends Yashpalsinh Gohil and Rahul Dangar so that they would eventually reach Ladumor. However, in the process, the paper started circulating on social media,” he added.
The FIR, registered on the basis of a complaint filed by MKBU registrar Kaushik Bhatt, also names Srushti Borda, a student of GLKCCM, as an accused. The four accused have been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 406, 409, 120B, 114, and 34 and Information Technology Act’s sections 72 and 72A for criminal breach of trust, criminal breach of trust by a public servant, criminal conspiracy, breach of confidentiality and privacy, disclosure of information in breach of lawful contract etc.
MKBU Registrar Bhatt said that with an aim to prevent the leak of question papers, the varsity had in 2011 adopted the system of e-mailing password-protected soft copies of question papers to examination centres minutes before the scheduled time of examination. But the question paper for Finance Account XII (Management Accounting II) subject was an exception.
“The examination centres were obliged to keep the sealed packets in strong rooms having CCTV camera surveillance. But Galani didn’t do it and instead took question papers in his chamber which didn’t have CCTV surveillance.”