Kalyan college clerk, official held for Apr 4 leak

Varsity Observers To Attend Apr 9 Exam In College

S Ahmed Ali, Hemali Chhapia-Shah & Pradeep Gupta TNN 

Mumbai: A senior information technology coordinator and a senior clerk of KM Agrawal College, Kalyan, and two final-year BCom students were arrested on Monday for leaking the TYBCom Marketing and Human Resources paper on April 4. The city crime branch arrested IT coordinator Rajkumar Mishra (35), clerk Rajendra Borade (43), students Vishal More (21) of Agrawal College and Pratik Mehta (21) of Birla College, Kalyan. 
    All accused were booked under IPC sections for criminal breach of trust, stealing and the Maharashtra Prevention of Malpractices at University and Board and other specified Act of 1982 and remanded to police custody April 11. 
    The University will also send an IT officer and exam observer to Agrawal college for the April 9 exam. The board of examinations will meet on April 10 to decide if the college should continue as a centre for the TYBCom exam. It will also decide what action to initiate against two colleges in Andheri and Vikhroli which went ahead and issued the leaked question papers. 
    On Monday, a crime branch team visited Agrawal college informing the management about the arrests of Borade, who worked with the college’s unaided section and Mishra, the co-ordinator for the exam. The management decided to terminate their services. The crime branch team also seized CCTV footage from the college. 
    Principal Anita Manna said the college received had the password for the question paper at 9.04am on Friday and Borade entered the computer centre at 10am, according to CCTV grabs. “We are co-operating with the police to find if anybody else was involved in the incident,” she said. 
    However, sources said the Agrawal College principal may have been negligent. Under Mumbai University rules, the principal and IT coordinator of each college are the two nodal officers appointed by the exam board to co-ordinate the distribution of exam papers. “The university sends the paper in encrypted format and separately sends passwords to these two coordinators. The principal should have supervised the process when Mishra was entering the password and printed copies,’’ said an official. “We give instructions on the manner in which the paper must be downloaded and the infrastructure that must be available for printing. It is also emphasised that the principal must oversee all these exercises which does not seem to have happened in this case,” said a senior university official. 
    Police had registered a case on the complaint of Mumbai University’s controller of examinations and crime branch unit-8 and the cyber police began probing it. “We went from one student to another and reached Borade who in turned said the paper was leaked by Mishra. On the other hand, Borade gave it to More, in turn gave it to his friend Mehta. It was forwarded by Mehta for monetary consideration to others,’’ said Sadanand Date, joint commissioner (crime). 
    “More said he recently met with an accident and was not prepared for the exams, so he approached Borade for the papers,” said investigating officer Raju Kasbe. “We identified other students who circulated the paper among themselves. We even have messages where they have confirmed the deals,” said senior inspector Deepak Patangre. 
LEAKED PAPER FOR 200 
THE PAPER LEAK On April 4, the TYBCom Marketing and Human Resources paper was leaked just about 45 minutes before the exam 
    With nearly 64,000 students taking the test across 223 centres, when Mumbai University was alerted about the leak, it electronically sent a new question paper to all the centres 
ACTION TAKEN BY THE COLLEGE KM Agrawal College of Arts, Commerce and Science, Kalyan, was established in 1994 
The college has sacked a clerk, Rajendra Borade, and computer technician Rajkumar Mishra 
THE ACCUSED Raju Borade worked as a clerk with Agrawal College since 2001. He lives in Thane with his wife, a policewoman 
Computer technician Rajkumar Mishra, was employed with the college for a little over a year 
THE PROBE 
    Police traced messages from one student’s cell to another until they reached Kalyan’s KM Agrawal College, where it was tracked to IT coordinator Rajkumar Mishra and senior clerk Rajendra Borade. Two TYBCom students from Kalyan, Vishal More of Agrawal College and Pratik Mehta of Birla College, were also arrested 
    Agarwal College received the password for the paper at 9.04 am. According to CCTV grabs, Borade entered the computer centre at 10am. Mishra was scheduled to download the paper and made a photocopy of the paper 
    Borade gave a copy to More, who passed it on to his friend Mehta, who forwarded it to others for as little as 200-500 
    Police have identified another 17-18 students who circulated the paper among themselves Varsity appoints new exam head T he Mumbai University appointed a new controller of examinations, Dinesh Bhonde, currently exam controller of Yashwantrao Chavan Open University. Bhonde will soon resign from the Nagpur-based university and join the exam house on the Kalina campus. TNN