Odisha SSC cancels examination over alleged paper leaks

The Odisha Staff Selection Commission (SSC) on Sunday cancelled the main written examination for the position of junior engineer (civil) after police found that the question papers were leaked by an inter-state racket.

Odisha Staff Selection Commission chairman Abhay said the examination conducted on July 16 have been cancelled and the next exam will be held on September 3.

The OSSC Combined Technical Services recruitment drive is being conducted to fill a total of 1,225 vacancies, of which 1,008 are for the post of junior engineer (civil) in various departments and 217 are for assistant training officer (ATO).

Balasore SP Sagarika Nath said it is clear that the question papers of the civil main written exam were leaked before the examination.

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Question papers seized before the examination matched the original question papers.

“A day before the actual examination, the accused took around 100 job aspirants, a majority of them B Tech graduates, to a hotel in Digha beach in several vehicles and gave them question papers. Following a tip-off, our team raided the hotel and arrested Bijendra Kumar, Deepak Kumar, Ajay Kumar, Raj Kumar (all from Bihar), Mohammad Siddique from Visakhapatnam, Biswaranjan Mohapatra, Siana Parveen, Mohammed Kamiruddin and Mustaquin Khan (all from Odisha). The 9 accused were taking ₹8-10 lakh for each question paper. They also ran similar racket in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. However, we are yet to arrest the mastermind of the racket,” said the SP.

The SP said the accused claimed to have in possession the question papers of some competitive examinations for Group-B and Group-C posts conducted by different recruiting agencies of the state and central governments.