The photocopy shop owner. Picture by Pranab Biswas

March 7: English question papers that looked exactly like the ones used in HS were found in a Nadia photocopy shop last night, a week before the exam, but the council denied any paper leak.

“We thoroughly examined the copies found in Kalyani. They do not match the original papers in any way,” council president Gopa Dutta said.

Police raided the shop in Kalyani town, 50km from Calcutta, around 10pm and found 13 copies of what looked like higher secondary English (group B) papers.

They showed all details of an original paper such as the date of examination, subject code and name of the group. The order of questions and numbering matched those of the original.

The owner of the shop, Pranotosh Mondal, told police two men came on Tuesday and asked him to make 50 copies of a question paper. “After a copy had been made, they took away the original and asked him to make 50 more from the first. The copies were to be delivered on Sunday,” a police officer said.

Suspecting that the paper had leaked, the police immediately alerted the council and arrested Pranotosh, 45. Hard discs from computers in his cybercafe in the same room have been seized. Call records of his phone are being checked.

Around 4.4 lakh students will write their HS exam from Tuesday. The English (group-B) exam is on Day III.

Nadia police chief H.K. Kusumakar said: “Pranotosh said he was offered good money for copying the papers. We suspect a racket in selling copies of question papers.”

Dutta demanded punishment for those “distributing fake question papers to innocent students”.

A council team came to Kalyani this morning and returned to Calcutta with the seized papers. Council officials went into a huddle to find out whether the seized papers matched the original.

The officials concluded at 7.30pm that they had “no resemblance” to any of the three sets of original English (Group B) question papers for 2008.

The council keeps three sets of question papers ready for every subject. If there is a leak, the standby sets are used.

Pranotosh, who runs the photocopy shop and cybercafe at a busy market in Kalyani, has been remanded in police custody.