top of page

By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

TET postponed after paper leak, three held

Mumbai: In another shocker, the Maharashtra Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) question paper has ‘leaked’ - barely 24 hours before the scheduled examination on Sunday - jeopardising the future of thousands aspiring to join the noble profession of teaching, officials said here. Reacting quickly, the Maharashtra State Council of Examination cancelled Sunday’s paper scheduled to be held simultaneously at 1,028 centres across the state and said that the new date will be announced early next week. As...

TET postponed after paper leak, three held

Mumbai: In another shocker, the Maharashtra Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) question paper has ‘leaked’ - barely 24 hours before the scheduled examination on Sunday - jeopardising the future of thousands aspiring to join the noble profession of teaching, officials said here. Reacting quickly, the Maharashtra State Council of Examination cancelled Sunday’s paper scheduled to be held simultaneously at 1,028 centres across the state and said that the new date will be announced early next week. As many as six lakh candidates were scheduled to appear for the examination across 1,728 centres at 37 locations, officials said. The paper leak was detected and verified swiftly by Bhiwandi Police in Thane district which has arrested three alleged suspected, two from Bihar and one from Haryana, who were planning to hawk it for a staggering sum of Rs. 1.50 crore, suggesting the involvement of an inter-state gang behind the incident. Giving details, the Bhiwandi Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Dudhe said that the question paper was allegedly being ‘sold’ for a staggering Rs 1.50 crore, indicating a well-organised racket transcending the state border. He said that early on Saturday, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP-II) Dr. Pawan Bansod received a confidential tip-off and he immediately alerted senior officials who launched a discreet operation to track and apprehend the culprits. “An informant tipped us that the accused were travelling from New Delhi to Mumbai carrying copies of the TET question papers. After verification, we laid a trap and arrested the three suspects in Bhiwandi. However, the kingpin/s behind the racket remain absconding,” Dudhe said. Police said that the papers were to be sold for Rs 1.50 crore for which advance was reportedly collected from some persons. The arrested accused are: Rajiv Shah, 45 and Akash Kumar, 30, both of Patna in Bihar and Dheeraj Kumar, 28, of Panipat in Haryana. Four Sets Official sources said that the police sleuths accosted the suspected trio in a local hotel room where they were staying, questioned and searched them. They recovered four sets of purported copies of the crucial TET paper from them. Upon sustained questioning they admitted that these were the copies of the TET examination question paper of June 28. Experts from the MSCE were immediately summoned to confirm the documents recovered and the officials confirmed that many of the questions apparently were similar to those in the official TET exam paper of Sunday. Armed with the information, the Kongaon Police Station in Bhiwandi initially detained the trio, filed a case and then placed them under arrest. They are slapped with charges under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita Sections 318(4), 316(5) and 61(2), besides stringent sections of the Maharashtra Examination Act, 2024, said Senior Police Inspector (HQ) Shailesh Salvi. As news of the paper leak spread like wildfire, thousands of candidates vent their ire before the mediapersons and on social media, demanding an overhaul of the public examinations monitoring systems and stringent punishment to the accused. SIT Formed The Thane Police have formed a 9-member SIT comprising Dr. Bansod, Sachin Sangle, Dr. Vinay Marathe and other officers, to investigate the source of the leak, identify the masterminds, and determine whether the network was linked with similar examination scams across the country. The TET paper leak comes days after the nationwide furore over the NEET 2026 exam paper leak with questions raised on the country’s public examinations system amid claims and assurances of tight security and monitoring. Congress, CJP flay govt Maharashtra Congress President Harshwardhan Sapkal and Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke pounced on the state government, accusing it of failing to safeguard the future of thousands of deserving candidates. They demanded a thorough probe and stringent action against everyone involved, lamenting how a series of examination scandals have damaged the credibility of the state’s education and public exams systems. “The government is not bothered. They are busy with breaking political parties. The so-called double-engine regime is to be blamed for the ‘double-leaks’ in such a short time. The education minister must resign,” demanded Dipke. The examination system has come under a cloud with several entrance and recruitment exams, including the NEET, UGC-NET, the Maharashtra TET and others cancelled or being probed in the past three years, triggering huge public outrage and raising question marks on the careers of lakhs of candidates.

KL Rahul and the Inevitable Call

In late January 2026, KL Rahul sat down with Kevin Pietersen and spoke with rare honesty about retirement. At 33, the elegant Karnataka batsman admitted the thought had crossed his mind. “I don’t think it’s gonna be that difficult,” he said. “If you’re honest with yourself, when it’s time, it’s time. And there’s no point dragging it. Obviously, I’m some time away.” Those words landed like a quiet full stop on a career that has been anything but quiet. Rahul has not retired yet—he recently scored a composed century in the Ranji Trophy to help Karnataka advance—but the conversation feels timely. His body has been sending signals for years. The question is no longer if he will retire, but how much cricket his fragile frame has left.


Rahul’s talent was evident from the moment he announced himself. A classical right-hander with a high backlift and even higher elbow, he made batting look effortless whether opening in Tests or keeping in white-ball cricket. His ODI average hovers around 50, a remarkable number for a top-order player who has also shouldered wicket-keeping duties. In Tests he has scored over 4,000 runs at a shade under 36, including big hundreds against Australia and England. In the IPL he has been a consistent anchor and, more recently, a calm captain for Lucknow Super Giants. Versatility defined him: opener, middle-order pivot, gloveman, and occasional leader.


Yet for every fluent cover drive, there has been a corresponding trip to the physio’s table. Rahul’s career reads like a medical journal of soft-tissue trauma. The list is long and painful.


In 2017, a shoulder injury sustained during the Pune Test against Australia forced him to play through pain for the rest of the series. He still scored 393 runs in that Border-Gavaskar Trophy, but the damage required surgery. He missed the 2017 IPL and the Champions Trophy. In 2021, acute appendicitis struck during the IPL; he underwent surgery and missed crucial games. Later that year, a left thigh strain ruled him out of a home Test series against New Zealand.


The 2022 sports hernia was particularly debilitating. A groin injury that had nagged him turned into a full-blown sports hernia. He flew to Germany for surgery and was sidelined for months, missing key Tests. Then came 2023—the year his body seemed to declare war. While chasing a ball in an IPL match for Lucknow against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Rahul suffered a complete tear of his quadriceps tendon. “My tendon ripped apart from my quadricep,” he later described it. Surgery followed. The layoff stretched nearly four months. He missed the World Test Championship final and parts of India’s white-ball summer. A niggle delayed his Asia Cup return further, forcing him to sit out the first two games.


These were not isolated incidents. Hamstring strains, thigh muscles, wrist sprains, forearm tweaks, and recurring groin issues have punctuated his career since his international debut in 2014. Between 2021 and 2024 alone, he battled at least half a dozen significant setbacks. Each comeback was met with applause, but also with the creeping realisation that Rahul’s body simply does not recover like it once did. Modern cricket’s calendar is relentless—IPL, bilateral series, ICC events, Ranji Trophy for fitness proofs. For a player whose game relies on timing and footwork rather than brute power, every missed week is costly.


The injuries have shaped the narrative around Rahul more than his runs. Critics called him inconsistent, fragile, or accused him of lacking the “X-factor.” Dropped from the Test XI multiple times, questioned as a keeper-batsman, and occasionally pilloried on social media, Rahul absorbed the blows with characteristic poise. In his Pietersen interview, he revealed the mental strategy that helped: “I tell myself I’m not that important.” That humility has served him well, but it also masks the frustration of a supremely gifted player whose prime was repeatedly interrupted.


My view is this: KL Rahul has been one of the most unfairly maligned Indian cricketers of his generation. Injuries robbed him of the chance to become the undisputed No. 1 batsman many expected after his breakout years. Had his body held up, we might be talking about 8,000-plus Test runs and multiple World Cup titles. Instead, his career is a study in resilience. Every time he has been written off, he has found a way back—often with a stylish hundred that silences the noise, at least temporarily.


(The writer is a senior journalist based in Mumbai. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page