Friday, Apr 19, 2024 | Last Update : 10:16 PM IST
Scissor leads to arrest of 4 in leak case
The second lead arrived from the WhatsApp group of some HSC students from where the papers were believed to have leaked.
Mumbai: In a surprising turn of events, it was a scissor that provided the Navi Mumbai police with links to the St Mount Mary High School in Palghar, from where the HSC papers of Secretarial Practice and Marathi subjects were leaked.
The images circulating on the messaging app WhatsApp showed a scissor, used as a paperweight during the examination that was pointing towards the paper code, which turned out to be one of the crucial leads. Following the leads, four accused were nabbed from Palghar on Friday night.
The sleuths received three leads, with the first being a backward integration that is tracking back the chain of senders of the image to the receivers. The second lead arrived from the WhatsApp group of some HSC students from where the papers were believed to have leaked. The police managed to get some of its personnel added to the group to get details. The third clue was the question paper code that is T-70 towards which the scissor was pointing, leading officials to the areas of Vasai, Virar and Palghar wherein the papers were circulated.
Joint commissioner of Navi Mumbai police Madhukar Pandey said, “We confiscated 40 mobiles phones from some members of 15 WhatsApp groups. Our officers were added in these groups in order to keep a tab on what was happening.” “The question paper code and the scissor placed on it were the prime inklings that led our investigations in the right direction,” added Mr Pandey. The mobile phones will be sent to Kalina forensic department to retrieve the data, which the students had deleted.
The accused are identified as Aanad Kamat (43), the principal, Ganesh Rane (30) the head clerk, advocate Nikhil Rane (29), who is also a private coaching class teacher and Vinesh Dhotre (27) a teacher at Lokmanya Junior College and also runs private classes. Kamat and Rane took photos of the question paper and sent to advocate Rane who further shared it with Dhotre. Dhotre then forwarded the papers and collected around Rs 20,000 from students of different groups.
