9 arrested in TSPSC exam paper leak case

Hyderabad police have arrested nine people for their alleged involvement in Telangana State Public Service Commission's (TSPSC) public examinations question paper leak, officials said on Tuesday.

DCP (South West Zone) Kiran Prabhakar said, "Based on the complaint given by Assistant Secretary (Administration) of TSPSC on March 11, a case was registered at Begum Bazar Police Station. On March 13, the Commissioner's Task Force and Central Zone team apprehended nine persons accused of stealing and leaking TSPSC's Assistant Engineer (AE) Exam Question Papers."

The accused have been identified as Pulidindi Praveen Kumar, Atla Raja Shekar Reddy aka Raju, Renuka, Lavdyavath Dhakya, Kethavath Rajeshwar, Kethavath Neelesh Nayak, Pathlavath Gopal Nayak, Kethavath Srinivas and Kethavath Rajender Nayak.

According to the police, Praveen Kumar has been working in TSPSC since 2017 and Rajasekhar Reddy has been working as Network Expert since November 2017 on outsource basis as part of the team provided by Telangana State Technology Services (TSPS).

Rajasekhar Reddy, being a Network Expert, had full information about all the computer systems in the office of TSPSC and IP address details of all the systems.

Both of them managed to steal the data from the computer of the confidential section using Rajasekhar Reddy's expertise, they said.

"They transferred the data to Praveen Kumar's pendrive and took a printout of the (civil) exam paper and General Studies paper and handed over to Renuka and Dhakya Nayak by taking Rs 5 lakh from them on March 2. Subsequently, Rs 5 lakh was given to Praveen Kumar on March 6 after the exam," DCP Prabhakar told the media.

Adding to the information, the DCP said, "Rajeshwar Nayak, who is the brother-in-law of Dhakya Nayak, contacted his cousin by the name of Kethavath Srinivas, Police Constable of Medchal police station and asked him to purchase the question paper since he was also writing various exams. However, he refused to purchase the papers since he was focusing on Sub-Inspector recruitment and directed them to contact Nilesh Nayak and Gopal Nayak who were appearing for the AE (Civil) Exam."

Accordingly, Rajeswhar Nayak contacted Neelesh Nayak and Gopal Nayak and took an amount of Rs 13,50,000 from them on the assurance of providing the AE Question Paper. As promised, Dhakya Nayak and Rajaeshwar Nayak gave the AE (Civil) question paper to Neelesh Nayak and Gopal Nayak and confined them to their residence and escorted them to the examination centre on March 5.

The police seized four pen drives, one Dell laptop, one Dell desktop PC and 3 mobile phones from Praveen Kumar. While two laptops and an IPad from Atla Raja Shekar Reddy and four mobile phones from other accused persons.

All the accused persons were taken into custody by the Begum Bazar Police, they are being produced before the court for judicial remand, DCP added.