Patna: Chatra police from Jharkhand on Saturday claimed that Central Board of Secondary Examination (CBSE) question papers were leaked from Patna after two students from the Bihar capital were detained on Friday night.

The boys were picked up from their hideouts at Ram Krishna Nagar in Patna and subsequently taken to Chatra in Jharkhand.

Chatra superintendent of police (SP) Akhilesh B. Variar said on Saturday that the two students had sent questions of the Class X mathematics paper to their friend in Chatra over WhatsApp. These were later provided to directors of some private coaching institutes, who sold them to examinees at exorbitant rates.

During interrogation, the two reportedly confessed they had links with racketeers of Delhi and had sent the questions to their friends in Jharkhand on March 27, a day before the examination. "The mastermind behind the racket is yet to be arrested," Variar told The Telegraph over phone.

Police sources said the Jharkhand team neither contacted the Patna senior superintendent of police nor the R.K. Nagar police station in Patna for assistance to nab the suspects.

"It seems the police team from Jharkhand conducted raids at the hideouts of the racketeers on their own," said an official at R.K. Nagar police station.

Altogether nine students, including the two arrested from Patna, were taken into custody were sent to a remand home in Hazaribagh. Directors of a private coaching institute, Satish Pandey and Pankaj Singh, and a teacher, Haresh, who were earlier arrested, were sent to judicial custody on Saturday, SP Variar said.

Devesh Narain, the principal of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in Chatra, had lodged an FIR against four examinees who were caught while adopting unfair means in the examination. Later, a special investigation team was set up under the supervision of a deputy superintendent of police to probe the case.