Cuttack, Oct. 12: Officers of the crime branch today arrested two employees of a Puri school from which matriculation question papers were stolen earlier this year.

“We have arrested Patitapaban Chand, a peon, and Rohit Bhoi, a watchman under Odisha Conduct of Examination Act for dereliction of duty, which resulted in the theft of the question papers,” said B.K. Sharma, additional director-general of police (crime branch).

The duo were sent to judicial custody after their bail pleas were rejected today. The arrests are said to be a major breakthrough for the crime branch, which had earlier announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh for information regarding the theft at Bhagawati Vidyapeetha in Kakatpur, Puri.

The annual high school certificate exams were postponed because of the theft. Four persons, including the centre superintendent, deputy superintendent and two clerks of the school, were suspended in the wake of the incident that took place on March 20.

It had sparked off a lot of criticism as all exams, except Odia, for 4.56 lakh regular candidates had to be rescheduled.

The state government had ordered a crime branch probe on March 24. Three special teams were constituted and officials, along with a forensic team, visited the school for on-spot investigation.

Controversy stalked the HSC exams after an engineering student put up the results of the top 100 students on a social media site 12 hours before publication of the results on June 27. Authorities of the Board of Secondary Education, which conducted the matriculation exams in Odisha, had clarified that the student accessed the results while testing the result website and there was no hacking.