Six held, masterminds still remain untraced

Detectives have arrested six polytechnic and diploma students for allegedly leaking questions of the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) exams on social media platforms. 

The “leaked” questions, which matched with 30 to 40 percent questions of SSC exams, were sold between Tk 500 and Tk 25,000 through online money transaction platform bKash, said police.

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Law enforcers picked up Md Raju Ahmed, Md Faisalur Rahman Akash, Md Juhair Ayaz, Mohiuddin Imon, Shadhin Al Mahmud and Rashidul Islam Rony, aged between 22 and 25 years, in different areas of the capital on Sunday.

Speaking at a press briefing at the Media Centre of Dhaka Metropolitan Police yesterday, Abdul Baten, joint commissioner of the Detective Branch of police, said the masterminds of the gang still remained untraced. The masterminds included those involved in composing, printing or distribution of questions.

Prof Mahbubur Rahman, chairman of Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Dhaka, at the briefing claimed that the gang members mainly prepared a question paper from two or three previous board questions papers which sometimes match with the real ones.

The education board was closely working with the police to trace the masterminds and claimed that they so far did not find the involvement of any board staff in leaking questions, he added.

He, however, admitted that such leakages can occur during the printing and distribution of the question papers at different institutions.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid yesterday said they were looking into the question leakage and if necessary, the ministry would consider retaking the exams, but that would happen only after getting right information about the alleged question leak.

He was talking to journalists at Sylhet MAG Osmani International Airport, reports our Sylhet correspondent.

PRESS BRIEFING

Abdul Baten, joint commissioner of the DB, said the arrestees first created Facebook groups named “All Board Examinee”, “AN IK”, “Alex Rasel”, “SSC Question 2017 Dhaka Board” and “SSC Question 2017 Barisal Board”.

Later, they added clients to the groups to distribute the “fake questions” among them via messenger services using fake IDs or on the messaging site “Whatsapp”. They gave the question papers only to those who paid them through the bKash account, said the DB official.

Police seized two laptops, three CPUs, three routers, 12 mobile phone sets and 12 SIM cards from their possession.

“We are now checking whether these group members have any connection with education board officials,” said the joint commissioner, adding that they were monitoring activities of some suspects in the social media.

Besides, police were sending SMS to examinees seeking information from them about anybody approaching them for sale of exam questions.

Baten also sought assistance from the education ministry, education boards and all other stakeholders to trace all the gang members.

A case was lodged against the six arrestees with Kalabagan Police Station. Abdur Rahman, inspector of DB and also the investigation officer of the case, produced the arrestees before a Dhaka court, seeking seven-day remand for each of them. The court placed them on bail for four days each.

There had been allegations of question leakages in SSC, HSC and JSC exams in the past several years. In most of the cases, questions were leaked allegedly via Facebook and SMS.

In 2014, a government enquiry committee found that questions of English second paper, and mathematics second paper of the HSC exams under the Dhaka education board were leaked.