Patna, July 21: The Bihar School Examination Board under its arrested former chairman Lalkeshwar Prasad Singh had issued admit cards to appear in this year's Intermediate examinations to 53 students without any registration, police have found.

The board had registered a total of 645 students of the Vishun Roy College in Vaishali - owned by arrested topper scam kingpin Bachcha Rai - and they were provided with admit cards, said Patna SSP Manu Maharaaj, who is heading the special investigating team (SIT) probing the scam.

"The police were shocked to find that an additional 53 students were provided with admit cards without any registration by the board," Maharaaj told The Telegraph. "These students appeared in the examinations on behalf of the Vishun Roy College. For appearing in an Intermediate examination, a student needs to be registered by the board, should have passed his or her sent-up test (previous class annual exam), should have paid the examination fees during the filling up of the form and should have some proof that he or she is a student of the college. In connection with these 53 students, who are being searched for now, they have not been registered by the board but have been provided with admit cards."

These 53 "ghost" students do not include the toppers against whom FIRs have been lodged.

"Bachcha Rai must have taken a staggering amount from their parents to ensure that they are included in the list of students of the Vishun Roy College and are provided with admit cards without any registration," Maharaaj said. "The police will be tracing out these students and they will be named in the FIR. Apart from this, it has been earlier pointed out by the police that a total of 42 students of the college had been provided with double registration resulting in them having two admit cards. The details about these students had been sought from the BSEB but the board could only provide details of nine students and said that the details of the rest had 'vanished'."

After this new revelation, four board employees - Vinod Kumar Jha, Surendra Prasad, Arun Kumar Singh and Chandmani Prasad, all posted in the board's Vaishali district section - were arrested on Thursday on charges of fraud and corruption. The total number of arrests in connection with the scam stands at 26.

Maharaaj said last year's Intermediate examinations will also be investigated.

"The police have found that the Intermediate examinations of 2015 were also rigged by Lalkeshwar, (his wife) Usha, Bachcha and their associates," he said. "The investigations now will also centre on last year's examinations and all students and employees involved will see their names in the FIR. They will not be spared."

More details have also emerged about Bachcha's elaborate result-rigging ploy.

"He used to print blank answer sheets with the same serial numbers (as his college students)," Maharaaj said. "If he couldn't 'fix' the examination centre, he would hire scholars to write the copies on his printed answer sheets. Once the papers would come to the evaluation centre, the original copies would be replaced by his copies. The original answer sheets had a watermark of the BSEB and Bachcha's printed copies didn't. But the man managed the board and no one said anything. Printing units at Calcutta and Mathura, where the copies were printed and results processed, are under the scanner too."