While distributing NEET UG question papers to students, officials of any exam centre are required to open two aluminium boxes — one manual, and another digital. While the manual is opened using a key and cutter, the digital one unlocks automatically 45 minutes before the examination. However, this did not happen at Oasis School in Hazaribagh, reported Indian Express.
A digital lock on two boxes containing question papers did not open at the Jharkhand exam centre minutes before the exam began at 2 pm and centre officials had to open using a cutter following directions from the NTA. Furthermore, the question papers are enclosed in a seven-layered plastic envelope but according to Bihar’s Economic Offences Unit (EOU), the envelope had a breach at one end and appeared to have been cut, the report added.
Imtiyaz Alam, the centre superintendent at Oasis School told the news agency that EOU officials visited the school to investigate the matter on June 21. They also found that the serial code found on the burnt remains of a leaked question paper in Bihar matched that of the examination centre. He also added that the stickers around the aluminium boxes were not uniform, and the patterns of the latches also differed.
“Digital locks were also used in the previous NEET-UG exams, and there was a beep that indicated they were open. This year we were surprised when they didn’t unlock. We alerted our city coordinator Ehsanul Haque, and he contacted the NTA, and we were told that we should cut it using a cutter,” NTA’s observer Vishwa Ranjan told the news agency.
According to NTA officials, the digital locks can malfunction but it doesn’t necessarily mean these were tampered with.
Meanwhile, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials have re-registered one case each from Gujarat and Bihar and three from Rajasthan as its own FIR. They are also likely to take up another case from Maharashtra’s Latur, the CBI officials said. The CBI has already registered its own FIR in connection with the case on a reference from the Union education ministry to conduct a comprehensive probe, reported PTI. CBI is now probing six cases of alleged irregularities in NEET-UG.
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