Another paper leak hits Mumbai University

Mumbai: Yet another paper leak incident has rocked Mumbai University. In the latest incident, the Amboli police on Thursday arrested a third-year student who had carried the question papers of the fifth-semester of Bachelor of Management Studies (BMS) on her mobile phone during the examinations. However, this was not a solitary incident. According to sources, several such papers of BMS exams that were conducted between Monday and Wednesday were ‘leaked’ on WhatsApp an hour before the examinations started.

The police found images of question of two papers in the mobile phone of the student caught on Thursday. The two question papers were of Logistics and Supply Chain Management that was held on Monday and Marking-Service Marking that was held on Wednesday.

A preliminary inquiry revealed that while the examination starts from 11 am, students receive such question papers at around 9 am.

According to the college, the student was found with a replicated image of the question paper in her mobile phone. The college management immediately informed the University of Mumbai (MU) and the Pro Vice Chancellor of MU asked the college to report the matter to the nearest police station. A special team of officials was sent to the college by MU to look into the issue.

The process of sending question papers from MU to all its colleges is done by the Digital Exam Paper Delivery System (DEPDS). This DEPDS has been developed for security measures after witnessing such kind of leaks in the colleges by staff and students. Every question paper has a watermark which shows the authenticity of these papers along with the name of the exam centre and college code.

MU officials claim to have a ‘secured’ process of distributing the question papers. “We send the question papers to all the colleges via DEPDS on the day of examination. It is sent online two hours before the exam after which the college is supposed to take printouts according to the number of students in the college and then start the distribution process,” said an official.

This system was adopted to tackle the question paper leak issue, which has been taking place for years in city colleges. In 2016, several MU staff were held for leaking Engineering papers. In the same year, B.Com papers too were leaked and the culprits were caught by the police. This year HSC papers were leaked on WhatsApp in March and culprits were caught by the Navi Mumbai police.

At the time of going to the print, Paramjit Singh Dahiya, Deputy Commissioner of Police Zone 9 told The Asian Age, “There has been one arrest in the BMS paper leak case. The Amboli police has arrested a student from MVM College.”