At Jharkhand school, digital lock on boxes with NEET question papers did not open

The digital lock on two boxes which contained the NEET-UG exam question papers in a Hazaribagh school in Jharkhand did not automatically open on May 5 as it was supposed to, forcing officials to use a cutter.

This was told to the The Indian Express (IE) by the principal of the Hazaribagh school. The investigators suspect the question papers are believed to have leaked from this school.

The boxes with question papers came with two locks – one manual and the other digital.

While there was a key and cutter to open the former, the latter was meant to unlock automatically 45 minutes before the start of the examination. But at the Oasis School in Hazaribagh, this did not happen.

When school principal Ehsanul Haque and the Hazaribagh district coordinator designated by the National Testing Agency (NTA) hurriedly contacted the NTA, they were told use to a cutter to prise open the digital lock.

The principal conveyed this to the superintendents and observers at five examination centres, including the Oasis School, where the digital lock failed to open.

NTA’s version

According to the news report, Imtiyaz Alam, the centre superintendent at the Oasis School, and NTA’s observer Vishwa Ranjan corroborated this.

According to NTA officials, if a digital lock doesn’t automatically unlock at the desired time, then the protocol can break it open with a cutter.

“These are digital devices that can malfunction. It doesn’t necessarily mean these were tampered with,” the daily quoted an unnamed NTA official as saying.

Complex process

On May 5, the day of the nationwide examination, Haque got an email informing him about nine boxes with question papers kept in two designated banks.

At 7.30 am, five centre superintendents and five observers were handed over nine cardboard boxes, inside which were the aluminium boxes with question papers, said the IE report.

Alam said the boxes were unpacked at 1.15 pm. The first layer is cardboard, which is torn open by a sharp object and inside it is an aluminium box with two locks – digital and manual.

Further, inside the aluminium box, there is another cardboard box containing a seven-layered plastic envelope with the question papers.

After the exam, a courier company appointed by the NTA took the OMR sheets in two separate aluminium boxes, which were sealed by manual locks. The keys were inside a yellow plastic packet stuck to the same box, the daily said.

Discrepancies found

Alam said that on June 21, the Bihar economic offences unit investigating the NEET exam paper leak found that the serial code found on the burnt remains of a leaked question paper in Bihar matched with the Oasis School exam centre in Hazaribagh.

Also, the officials pointed out that the stickers around the aluminium boxes were not uniform and the patterns of latches also differed. Also, the seven-layered envelope had a breach at one end and appeared to have been cut.