New Delhi, April 23: Question papers of the CBSE’s pre-medical test were leaked by a computer operator in the office of the board’s controller of examinations, according to police.

Hemant Sharma of CBSE’s confidential section had taken printouts of the papers and sold them to a coaching centre, police said.

L.K. Thaploo, the manager of Sachdeva PT College, a private coaching centre, has been arrested and police are hunting for the owner, a security guard at the CBSE office and two teachers who had solved the papers.

Additional commissioner (crime branch) B.K. Gupta said Sharma had hoped to make over Rs 1 crore from the deal. Rs 3 lakh has been seized from him.

Sharma had struck deals with the owner of the coaching centre to provide the papers for Rs 12 lakh, and with prime accused Ranjeet Verma to provide physics, chemistry, botany and zoology papers for Rs 50 lakh. Two unidentified persons had also agreed to pay him an equal amount for the papers.

Delhi police detected the leak on April 10, hours before nearly 2.4 lakh students across the country were to appear for the examination.

Ranjeet, a fourth-year MBBS student at Nagpur Medical College, and his brother Satinder are among six people arrested in the case. Police said Ranjeet spilled the beans on Sharma who will be interrogated next week.