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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.

Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has tentacles across the world: Ambassador Sujan Chinoy on India-Africa counterterror push



Monrovia: Former Indian envoy Sujan Chinoy praised the success of Group 4 of the all-party MPs delegation, led by Shiv Sena MP Shrikant Shinde, in fulfilling its objectives during visits to the UAE, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.



"The delegation was warmly received at the highest levels of government in all these countries, meeting presidents, vice presidents, foreign ministers, national security advisors, and senior parliamentary leaders. They also engaged with the Indian diaspora, journalists, social media influencers, and think tanks. The main goal was to raise awareness about the threat of global terrorism, particularly Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, in the context of Operation Sindoor. I believe this objective has been fully met, strengthening cooperation between India and African countries to combat Pakistan-based terrorism," Chinoy said.



He further highlighted the rising threat of terrorism in Africa, saying, "The African Union comprises a very large number of countries, and recent UN reports suggest that this continent is no longer immune to global terrorism. Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has its tentacles spread across the world. The terrorist networks afflicting Africa also have linkages with networks based in Pakistan. In recent years, Africa has emerged as a major centre for global terrorism, with groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, Tanzania, and Kenya, as well as many others operating out of Mozambique. Particularly, the Sahel region of Africa has experienced a significant spike in terrorist incidents."



"There's been a perceptible change in terms of the scourge of global terrorism and its extension to this part of the world. So with all these aspects being covered in the discussions, we have been successful in sensitising all our interlocutors, not only in the UAE but also in West Africa, about the need for us to work together to meet this challenge," he added.



Reflecting on his personal experience during the outreach visit, Chinoy stated, "I have been serving the nation for the last 44 years, and I am extremely privileged to be a member of this group led by Shrikant Shinde. The group comprised many eminent members of parliament, all of them stalwarts in their own right, and it was a very humbling experience for me to be in their company for so long and to play a supportive role in the huge responsibility that had been placed on the shoulders of each member of this delegation. So it was a learning experience. It was a humbling experience, but above all, it was a tremendous privilege for me to serve in this capacity as a member of this all-party MPs delegation."



The delegation, which includes BJP MPs Bansuri Swaraj, Atul Garg, Manan Kumar Mishra, Indian Union Muslim League's E.T. Mohammed Basheer, Biju Janata Dal's Sasmit Patra, BJP leader S.S. Ahluwalia, and former Ambassador Sujan Chinoy, is part of a broader initiative by India to counter global misinformation and highlight its zero-tolerance policy on terrorism. The group is also briefing international partners on India's response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack and its wider strategy to combat cross-border terrorism.



This multi-party delegation, consisting of seven groups led by one MP each, has been initiated to counter global misinformation and highlight India's zero-tolerance policy on terrorism.

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