Police escort ITI paper leak accused off court premises in Bhubaneswar on Thursday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, July 28: Seven youths, including two students, were arrested last night for allegedly leaking question papers of all-India Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) examination on June 26.

The annual examination for engineering drawing of electrician trade of the All-India Trade Test (AITT) for craftsmen was cancelled on July 26 as the question paper for the examination was leaked before the test.

State Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (SCTEVT), the agency that was conducting the examination in the state, had lodged a complaint in this regard with the Capital police.

The police said they had caught one of the accused, a student, the same day. Subsequent interrogation led to the arrest of others. The mastermind behind the question paper leak is yet to be caught.

The arrested persons were sent to jail after their bail pleas were rejected. They were identified as Sridhar Parida, 20, Manoranjan Choudhury, 20, P.K. Amulya Mohapatra, 26, Siba Prasad Guru, 26, Maniraj Lenka, 26, Rakesh Mallick, 28, and Soumya Ranjan Jena, 28.

While Parida and Choudhury were two ITI students, others, except Lenka, had finished their study. Lenka owns a photocopy shop in Mancheswar, where the leaked question papers were photocopied.

The accused persons were booked under sections 418, 409, 427, and 34 of the Indian Penal Code.

“Till now, we have not been able to find out how the question papers came to the market and who leaked these papers first. Our investigation is going on. All this will be clear once the main accused is caught,” said the officer.

He also said that these people were selling the question papers at varied rates. Though they admitted to have got Rs 500 for each question paper from the buyers, they would have got the rest after the examination was over.

The vice-chairman of SCTEVT, Atul Kumar Sahu, said they had got information about the arrest from the police.

“But the investigators have not informed us how the question papers were leaked,” he said.

Around 40,000 students of 464 ITI colleges were taking the exams across 309 centres. Though other tests were conducted as per schedule, officials said that the new date for the re-examination of this particular paper would be declared soon.