CBI files FIR in Staff Selection Commission paper leak, raids 12 locations

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case in Staff Selection Commission (SSC) examination paper leak incident and carried out raids at 12 locations, including Noida and Delhi. The agency has filed a case against seven job aspirants, nine site supervisors, one custodian of question paper bank as accused Sant Prasad Gupta and unknown people. The CBI is also probing the role of unknown officials of SSC.

The agency has carried out raids at examination labs at Patna, Shimla, Ambala, Jaipur and three places in Delhi. CBI also carried out raids at Sify Technologies Ltd offices in Chennai, Mumbai, Okhla and Noida.

The CBI started probe into the SSC paper leakage case after the Centre issued notification in March this year that the probe agency has been asked to investigate the matter. The paper of an examination of the SSC, a government body which conducts examinations to recruit staff at multiple levels in various ministries and departments, was allegedly leaked, leading to protests from job-seekers.

"The agency has registered Preliminary Inquiry on March 8 against unknown officers/officials of SSC, Government of India and other unknown persons for misconduct. Now we have registered a regular case into the matter," said a senior CBI officer. The agency has filed a case under 66B of Information and Technology Act apart from various provisions of Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act.

It was an electronic online examination and Sify used to take over the computer labs and sanitized the computers. The officer further elaborated that the computers on which the aspirants were giving examinations were tampered with. The conspirators had installed a software wherein the aspirants' computers were fully accessed remotely by the conspirators who answered the questions and sent answers over phone through WhatApps.

"Through the software pre-installed at the examination centres, the aspirants' computers were fully accessed by the conspirators who were operating it from far away locations and answering all the questions on behalf of the aspirants and sending them back on their phones," the officer said. The software is called 'trueviewer' and it was installed on the aspirants computers.

The leaked questions and answer keys matched with those of papers that were taken by the seven accused. The questions were encrypted with the custodian and they were to be decrypted using software uploaded on to the computers used for taking the examination.

The agency has identified the examination centers wherein such fudging and malpractices were carried out the accused people. The agency is probing leakage of questions of the Combined Graduate Level (Tier-II) Examination 2018 that was held from February 17 to 21 this year.

The SSC had recommended a CBI probe into the paper leak allegations after job aspirants carried out protests in February and March this year.

SSC CGL has a four-tier examination system and Tier I and Tier II are 'Computer Based Examination', while in Tier III and IV, job applicants take up a descriptive paper and a computer proficiency test or skill test.