Thane: A court in Thane district of Maharashtra on Wednesday remanded Ashok Saav and Prakash Misal, arrested recently in the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) paper leak case, to police custody until September 29.
Bhiwandi Police last week apprehended the two absconding suspects from Bihar and Beed, respectively, taking the count of arrested individuals named in the chargesheet to 18.
The 2nd Joint Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) court in Bhiwandi remanded Saav and Misal to police custody till September 29, an official said.
ACP (Bhiwandi division) Vijay Marathe told PTI that out of the 18 accused arrested in the case, 16 are in judicial custody.
According to a chargesheet filed by the Thane Police recently, question papers were smuggled out of an Agra printing press hidden inside shoe insoles by two employees for a mere Rs 8,000.
The chargesheet, submitted before a local court in Bhiwandi on September 18, names 18 accused, including alleged mastermind Bijendra Gupta, who was previously implicated in an Odisha paper leak.
"The copy of the chargesheet will be provided to the 16 accused in judicial custody in an electronic form (pen drive) as per the provisions of the BNNS, which is a first in the Bhiwandi court," Marathe told PTI.
All the 16 accused in judicial custody are scheduled to be produced before JMFC Judge A A Kore on Thursday.
"In compliance with Section 230 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), soft copies of the voluminous charge sheet will be handed over to them via pen drives," Marathe added.
Defence counsel Narayan Iyer on Wednesday moved an application under Section 362 of the BNSS requesting the magistrate to commit the case to the sessions court in Bhiwandi.
Citing Schedule I of the BNSS and legal precedents, the defence argued that offences punishable by up to 10 years are triable by a sessions court rather than a magistrate court.
Following the submission, the court directed the Investigating Officer and the Assistant Public Prosecutor (APP) to submit their official response.
The paper leak racket unravelled a day before the TET examination scheduled on June 28 after Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone II) Pavan Bansod received a tip-off about three men attempting to sell exam papers to a Bhiwandi resident.
Police had laid a trap using decoy personnel in the Kongaon area, detained the suspects, and seized four sets of question papers. Subsequent verification with Maharashtra State Council of Examination (MSCE) officials confirmed that the seized material matched the actual question paper.
The accused have been charged under relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) related to cheating, criminal breach of trust, and criminal conspiracy, along with Maharashtra state laws on examination malpractices and unfair means.
This report was published from a wire feed. Apart from the headline, the EdexLive Desk has not edited the copy.