Bihar toppers row: Former education board chief took answer sheets outside evaluation centre, say cops

The Bihar State Education Board’s former chairman Lalkeshwar Prasad took answer sheets of ’toppers’ out of the evaluation centre’s strongroom and got at least two of them to write fresh answers, the officer investigating the case has said in an interview to The Indian Express.

Manu Maharaj, senior SP, Patna, said that investigation showed that some stacks of the answer sheets were found without mandatory serial numbers. Further, some answer sheets were found with manually written serial numbers, as per the report in The Indian Express.

In the interview to The Indian Express, the senior SP has also alleged that the interrogation of other accused also revealed that Prasad granted affiliation to more than 200 colleges, although they did not have the required infrastructure.

The scandal surfaced following a video featuring the toppers that went viral, in which arts and science toppers Ruby Rai and Saurabh Shrestha were seen giving ridiculous answers to questions on their subjects.

Embarrassed by the irregularities, the state government had ordered a SIT probe in the matter during which Bachcha Rai, the principal of Vishun Roy College, was arrested besides some other accused.

The SIT subsequently booked Lalkeshwar Prasad and his wife Usha Sinha, a former principal of the Ganga Devi women’s college in Patna.

On 21 June, Lalkeshwar, his wife and five others were remanded to 14 days judicial custody in connection with the controversy.

Interestingly, it appears that Vishun Roy College, which faces allegations of being in a nexus with the Bihar education board, has been under the official scanner earlier as well. In 2015, an inquiry commission had conducted investigations on the college, according to a report in The Indian Express . This was after it produced toppers year after year, arousing suspicion. However, the report of the committee has not been made public.

With inputs from PTI