Patna: Over 5,600 practical copies of Class X and XII students are missing from Rajendra Prasad High School-cum Inter College at Hathua in Gopalganj district even as authorities are probing the disappearance of over 42,000 Class X answer sheets from the Girls Senior Secondary School, also in Gopalganj.

"A detailed investigation has been ordered," Gopalganj district magistrate Animesh Kumar Parashar told The Telegraph on Friday. "Education department officials are conducting the probe."

The order came after the district administration received a written complaint. Gopalganj district education officer (DEO) Akhilesh Prasad said that preliminary inquiry showed that all copies of the practical exam (1,000 of Class X and 4,600 of Class XII) were sold to scrap dealers as they were rotting.

Asked if the school administration had sought approval from the DEO office, Prasad replied in the negative. "They should have," Prasad said, adding that his office was looking into the lapses. He said 5,682 copies had gone missing from the school. The matter came to light when Pramod Mishra, a resident, sent a written complaint to the district magistrate seeking a fair probe.

Authoritative sources said the DEO has issued a show-cause notice against school principal Fasiullah Ansari. The DEO sought to know how the school administration thought of disposing of the copies without the education department's permission. Under existing rules, authorities sources said, the copies should be preserved for three years and be disposed of only after obtaining permission from senior education department officials. But the copies were reportedly sold just months after the examination.

Last week, the authorities had deferred release of Class 10 exam results following the disappearance of 42,400 answer sheets of the exam conducted by Bihar School Examination Board. Investigations showed a fourth grade employee of the school sold the answer sheets to a scrap dealer for just Rs 8,500.

Gopalganj superintendent of police (SP) Rasheed Zaman set up a special investigation team to probe the incident. The SIT recovered an original answer sheet of the Class 10 exam from a scrap dealer's shop and arrested its owner Pappu Gupta. It also arrested the school's principal, Pramod Kumar Srivastava, peon Chhatu Singh and auto-rickshaw driver Sanjay alias Santosh Kumar.

Additional superintendent of police Neeraj Kumar, who is heading the SIT, said separate police teams have been sent to Uttarakhand and Punjab to recover the answer sheets. They said the sheets had been sold to dealers in these two states.

Till date 27 police teams have raided 81 places in Gopalganj, Siwan and elsewhere in Uttar Pradesh. But all answer sheets are yet to be traced.