CBI raids 26 places in 6 states over exam leak at Open Schooling institute

It was alleged that there were mal-practices in the conduct of examination with respect to large number of students in the class X and XII examinations, conducted by NIOS in April, 2017

The CBI carried out searches at 26 locations across six states at the premises of National Institute of Open Schooling, its former officials and study centres in a case of alleged mal-practices in class Xth and XIIth examinations of 2017 conducted by NIOS in which 1800 candidates are under scanner, officials said Wednesday.

The searches were spread in the cities of Bhopal, Sehore, Ratlam, Umaria in Madhya Pradesh; Fatehabad, Faridabad in Haryana; Bhubaneswar, Ganjam in Odisha; Guwahati, Kamrup, Lakhimpur in Assam; Gangtok, Sikkim and New Delhi.

The search operation started Tuesday which continued Wednesday, they said.

During the operation, around 200 items such as hard disk drives, mobile phones and various incriminating documents including admit cards, vouchers, passbooks, mark sheets, cheque books, seals, diaries, answer sheets of NIOS, payments received from candidates, fees made to NIOS and & seating plan of examination hall etc., have been recovered, a CBI Spokesperson said here.

An incriminating document--seating plan of examination centres--was also recovered from a location where it was not meant to be present, he said.

The agency had registered the case on July 23 this year under the IPC sections of criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and corruption under prevention of corruption act on a complaint from Ministry of human resource development.

It was alleged that there were mal-practices in the conduct of examination with respect to large number of students (around 1800) in the class X and XII examinations, conducted by NIOS in April, 2017, he said.