TIRUPATI: The Chittoor police have busted a racket and arrested the heads of some corporate schools vis-a-vis malpractices in the Class X Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations. The intent of these schools was to get maximum marks or all-pass for their students appearing in the board examinations.
Seven persons have been arrested in connection with the alleged Class 10 first language paper leak case.
They were principal P. Suresh of the Sri Krishna Reddy Chaitanya School, Tirupati; English teacher K. Sudhakar at NRI Academy, Tirupati; Principal Arif of Chaitanya School, Tirupati; vice principal Giridhar Reddy of Narayana School, Tirupati; Dean K Mohan of Chaitanya School, Tirupati; and government school teachers from G.D. Nellore mandal Pavan Kumar Reddy and B. Somu.
Anantapur Range DIG Ravi Prakash said the police acted on the basis of a complaint lodged by the DEO, Chittoor. “The I-town CI with the help of Inspectors of Chittoor II town, West and East circles launched an investigation and first arrested Giridhar Reddy, vice-principal of Narayana school, Tirupati," he said.
Reddy confessed that the principals and vice-principals of these corporate schools formed into a racket and took the help of government teachers to commit malpractices in the SSC board Class 10 examinations.
“The heads of these corporate schools hatched a plan to get question papers from government teacher Pavan Kumar in a bid to get all their students passed without any difficulties and score more marks."
They aimed to secure more pass percentage for their schools. For this, they used to bribe Pavan Kumar a sum of Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000 on many occasions, the DIG said.
The question paper for the first language was leaked from the examination centre at ZP high school in Nellapalli, GD Nellore mandal. From there, it was forwarded to private school teachers through WhatsApp.
“Government teacher Pavan Kumar took the help of another government teacher B Somu, who was posted on invigilation duty at Nellapalli ZP high school. Somu photographed the question paper and sent it to Pavan, who further forwarded it to the corporate schools’ syndicate through WhatsApp, as per the case.
The investigation also revealed that the corporate schools, after receiving the question papers, will prepare answers and send them to their students with the help of invigilators at the exam centres, the DIG explained.
The arrested persons were booked under Section 5 r/w 8, 10 AP public examinations prevention of malpractices act and 408 IPC.
The police are trying to identify those including the invigilators, if any, helping the gang of corporate schools. Chittoor SP Rishanth Reddy, DSP Sudhakar Reddy and I town CI Narasimha Raju were present.
