Three teachers arrested in connection with missing OMR sheets

Three teachers were arrested Tuesday in connection with missing OMR sheets of 108 students who had written the matriculation examination from a government-run school in Malkangiri district, officials said.

Five persons, including four teachers and a peon, were also suspended in connection with the disappearance of the OMR sheets from SSD High School at Padia, they said.

Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP), U C Nayak said three teachers were arrested for conspiring and taking away the OMR answer sheets from the room of the head master of SSD High School on Saturday.

Those arrested were identified as Jalandhar Behera, Head Master of Nabin Chandra High School, Gothanpally, Nodal Observer Sandip Kumar Sahu and Deputy Centre Superintendent of SSD High School, he said.

Students of Nabin Chandra High School were appearing for the examination at SSD High School. Behera was angry as students of his school were not allowed to copy and cheat and he conspired with others to teach the head master of SSD high school a lesson by stealing the OMR sheets, the ASP said.

Behera and another teacher of his school, Prabhakar Padhi, were suspended, District Education Officer (DEO) Ramesh Chandra Sethi said.

Similarly, Head Master of SSD High School Bidyut Kumar Patra, teacher of his school Satrughna Swain and peon S P Sethi have also been placed under suspension, District Welfare Officer (DWO), P K Panda said.

The matter came to light after the authorities of SSD High School lodged a complaint at Padia police station on Sunday, police said.

The complaint said the optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets of 108 students, who appeared for Mathematics exam on Saturday, have gone missing from the school premises.

Thereafter, a police team led by the ASP visited the school to conduct a thorough probe into the incident.

The development comes after images of Mathematics question paper of the ongoing matriculation examination surfaced on social media on Saturday, prompting the state government to suspend three teachers in Kalahandi district.

Earlier, the question papers of Odia, Hindi and English subjects went viral on social media, putting the BSE, Odisha, in a tight spot.

The matriculation examinations began on February 22 and would conclude on March 8.

The Board of Secondary Education had earlier suspended 10 persons, including four examination centre superintendents, for their alleged role in spreading images of questions on social media.