Railway cancels group D exams after paper leak; over 24 held

Lucknow, Feb 26 (UNI) The Northern Railway cancelled today's Group D examinations for appointment of class four employees following leak of question papers after over 24 people were arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) here in this connection.

The Northern Railway Lucknow divisional manager R K Gupta told UNI here that the examination has been cancelled and date for a fresh test would be announced later.

Mr Gupta said an internal inquiry has also been ordered to find out the lapses, if any, in the department.

Railway officials told UNI here that the test was cancelled when the original question paper and the leaked ones were found as the same. The examinations are being held in three stages with the first one held on February 12, and the last one slated for March 5.

Meanwhile, the STF of the UP police has arrested more than two dozen people who were working as agents for a senior Railway employee posted at Charbagh station here, who supplied the papers.

Police sources said that a Jhansi-based woman who was allegedly behind the racket. Efforts were on to arrest the woman who reportedly runs a NGO in Jhansi.

STF claimed that the arrests were made following a tip-off after a news channel last night disclosed the news of question paper leak.

The police team raided at least 12 places last night in the state captial before nabbing the first culprit involved in the racket.

The arrested people disclosed before the police that they were given Rs 10,000 each for bringing candidates by the railway official who took between Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh for supplying the solved question paper.

SSP STF S K Bhagat said here that the investigation was underway to find out the kingpin of the racket as the arrested people have disclosed that Rs two lakh were collected from each student for supplying the solved question paper.

There were 107 centres in Lucknow for the examination which was conducted from 1100 hrs. More than five lakh candidates appeared in today's examination held at nine centres in the country.

Northern Railway Recruitment Board was holding a three stage examination on February 12, 26 and March 5 for recruiting 8,366 employees for the post of Khalasi, Chaprasi and Gangmen in the NR.

Over 1.6 million candidates have applied for the test and today was the second phase of the test.

The railways were running 18 special trains in the division for ferrying the candidates from the examination centres to their destination.

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