Balasore: Two more persons were arrested today by Balasore Police in connection with Odisha Staff Selection Commission (OSSC) question paper leak, one each from Odisha’s Puri and West Bengal. With this, the total number of arrested persons reached 27.

The arrested middlemen are Basudev Pradhan from Puri and Partha Sengupta from West Bengal. A detailed probe into the much-debated case is still underway, a senior official expressed.

Partha is a labour contractor by occupation and he supplies workers to a printing press there. After the question papers were printed, Partha supplied them to one Birendra Kumar working in the same printing unit. In turn, Birendra handed over the question papers to another Bishal Kumar.

Worth mentioning, OSSC previously issued show-cause notices on July 29 to about 55 candidates, who were allegedly involved in the JE (Civil) main exam question paper leak case.

Balasore Police had arrested eight other middlemen namely Bijay Mallick (25), Santanu Mishra (29), Pradeep Satpathy, Sandeep Kumar Mohanty (27), Niranjan Behera (55), Ajay Kumar Biswal (43), Rajib Lochan Sahu (33) and Sapan Kumar Rout (33) on August 5 in the question paper leak incident of JE (Civil) Mains Examination conducted by OSSC on 16th of July, 2023. They had contacted candidates to supply question papers before the scheduled date and time of the examination.

Police had arrested eight persons from Bihar including the mastermind. Earlier, police had also nabbed nine persons from Digha in West Bengal.

The main written examination of JE (Civil) conducted on July 16 was cancelled by the OSSC following a report submitted by Balasore SP Sagarika Nath claiming the bust of interstate job fraud racket.

Balasore SP had also made it clear that the members of the racket provided genuine question papers of the JE (Civil) main examination to some job aspirants by collecting huge sums from them.

Biswaranjan is the kingpin of the job fraud racket. He and his accomplices were mainly operating in the states like Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. They were targeting jobseekers and posing themselves as close acquaintances of officials in organisations conducting examinations, the fraudsters were duping the job aspirants of around Rs 10 to 15 lakh from each.

The fraudsters were initially obtaining two signed cheques and original certificates from each jobseeker and then executing their game plans, divulging their 'modus of operandi' the SP had said.