Lucknow: Four engineers orchestrated the leak of question papers for the selection of Review Officer/Assistant Review Officer in Uttar Pradesh, held on February 11, which was earlier denied by the administration.

Ghazipur District Magistrate Aryaka Akhauri had asserted that the allegations of paper leak were wrong but she was proved wrong after four months when thorough investigation revealed that the question papers were compromised.

Amid allegations of irregularities, the exam in which 10 lakh students had appeared, was cancelled.

Investigations uncovered that the exam paper leak occurred at Bishop Johnson Girl's High School and College in Prayagraj.

Later, a Special Task Force discovered that the leak first occurred at the printing press, reportedly located in Bhopal, 950 km away for the test venue.

Another leak happened at the school a few hours before the exam.

Arpit Vineet Yashwant, who was overseeing the examination, took pictures of the question paper at 6:30 a.m. on the morning of the exam. Five people, including Arpit, have been arrested in connection with this case.

At the core of the leak were four engineers: Rajiv Nayan Mishra, Sunil Raghuvanshi, Vishal Dubey, and Subhash Prakash.

Rajiv Nayan Mishra conspired with a printing press employee Sunil Raghuvanshi as well as Vishal Dubey and Subhash Prakash.

All of the accused have engineering degrees.

Vishal Dubey and Subhash Prakash used to arrange admissions of students into engineering colleges.

Vishal Dubey contacted Rajiv Nayan Mishra, informing him that his friend Sunil Raghuvanshi worked at the printing press where exam papers were printed.

Sunil Raghuvanshi was then bribed by them for in return for exam question papers.

When the RO/ARO question paper arrived at the printing press, Sunil informed his associates. He demanded Rs 10 lakh in exchange for access to the paper, with the condition that the candidates read the paper in front of him to prevent it from going viral.

Rajiv Mishra, Sunil Raghuvanshi, and another accomplice, Subhash Prakash, agreed to these terms.

According to the Varanasi unit of the special task force, four accused were smart and technically sound as they had engineering degrees.

Sunil managed to access the question paper on February 3 at the printing press, where he was present for machine repair. He took away question papers along with a machine part pretending to repair it.

He then informed the others that he had been able to steal question papers from the factory.

The group decided that on February 8, three days before the exam, candidates would be taken to Hotel Komal and shown the paper for Rs 12 lakh each.

Sunil arrived at the hotel with six copies of two sets of question papers. Subhash Prakash, with the help of an assistant, solved the papers, and the students were made to memorise the answers.

Two other accomplices, Vivek Upadhyay and Amarjeet Sharma, brought the candidates to the hotel. Vivek was from Uttar Pradesh, and Amarjeet from Bihar; they acted as agents arranging the candidates.

Subhash Prakash was also a candidate for the RO/ARO exam. The police found question papers on his phone, and the serial numbers matched those that went viral on social media.

It was later revealed that Rajiv Nayan Mishra, greedy for more money, had shared images of the question paper with Ravi Attri, the mastermind behind the UP Police constable paper leak. As a result, the paper went viral on social media.

Rajiv Mishra, the mastermind behind this operation, had a history of involvement in other crimes. His girlfriend, Shivani, also took part in the operation, managing the money transactions, according to the police. Six people have been arrested, and investigations are ongoing.