Manas Patra

Meena Patra kept her word. As soon as she came to know of her fugitive husband, Manas’s whereabouts, she informed police.

Manas Patra, running from the law for leaking question papers for this year’s now-postponed Joint Entrance Examination, was arrested on Wednesday afternoon while travelling with his wife on a bus the police intercepted at Tikiapara in Howrah.

When Metro visited the couple’s flat at Konnagar after Manas’s name came up during the investigation into the leak, she had said, “If my husband comes to me or if I come to know of his whereabouts, either I will inform the police or take him to the CID headquarters.”

The employee of the confidential proof-reading section of the government-owned Saraswati Press, which prints JEE question papers, admitted his crime to the police.

P. Nirajnayan, special inspector-general, CID, said: “We intercepted the bus when it took a turn towards Howrah town from Kona Expressway and arrested the person we were looking for.”

Manas had been on the run for four days.

CID sources said Meena learnt that her husband was staying at a relative’s house in West Midnapore a couple of days ago and went there on Tuesday.

“She persuaded Manas to go to the place of one of her friends in Howrah. Before boarding the bus, she called us and gave the details, including the name of the bus route and its registration number,” said a CID official.

“We knew the bus would ply along Kona Expressway and a team of officers was waiting there. As soon as they spotted the bus, they followed it first and intercepted it at Tikiapara,” said Nirajnayan.

Meena Patra

Manas became a suspect after Kharagpur police arrested his cousin Arun Choudhury and his aide Mihir Dandapat last Saturday morning. The duo had turned up at Ghatal bus stand to sell photocopies of the question papers to the police, masquerading as customers.

During interrogation, he confessed that he had passed the manuscripts of this year’s mathematics, biology, physics and chemistry papers to Choudhury.

“We are yet to know from him whether he had done the same before previous year’s JEE,” said Nirajnayan.

On Wednesday, the police brought Patra and Choudhury together for interrogation

“Manas said he was transferred to the confidential proof-reading section from a technical department one and a half years ago. He hasn’t yet said whether he had leaked the question papers last year, too” said a CID official.

Two other employees of Saraswati Press were summoned to CID’s Bhowani Bhawan headquarters.

“We are verifying whether any other employee is involved in the leak,” said the official.