BJP’s Telangana president Bandi Sanjay Kumar was arrested by the Telangana Police after midnight from his residence at Karimnagar as the prime accused in the leakage of Hindi question paper of ongoing Class X examinations conducted by the state board.

Bandi Sanjay Kumar’s arrest triggered protests in the state with BJP workers demanding his release. The BRS also protested against the BJP leader for playing with the future of students

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The police said that Bandi Sanjay had received the question paper from a former journalist Prasanth, who was named accused number two in the case. It was Prasanth who had also circulated the paper in the media on Tuesday soon after the Hindi examination began, claiming it to be a case of leak of question paper.

Prasanth, according to the police, was the Warangal convenor for NaMo TV. A 16-year-old minor had taken the photograph of the question paper and shared it with Prasanth who forwarded it to many BJP leaders.

Meanwhile, Bandi Sanjay was presented before the first class judicial magistrate at Hanamkonda in the latter’s residence since today was a holiday. BJP legal cell also filed a habeas corpus in the Telangana High Court which will come up for hearing tomorrow. The case was registered against nine accused by Kamalapur police stations under various sections of IPC and TS public examination (prevention of malpractices) Act, 1997 based on the complaint by the headmaster of Kamalapur Boys School.

The remand report read: “This is a case of preplanned and evil designed criminal conspiracy, malpractices in SSC public examination with an intention to creative (sic) rumours and provoke breach of peace of the ongoing public examination in the TS State wherein A-1 Sri Bandi Sanjay Kumar Honourable MP and BJP party (president) hatched a plan with the help of A-2 and A-3 to leak out the ongoing SSC papers by taking a photo of a question paper in the cell phone.”

According to the remand report, Bandi Sanjay gave direction to Prasanth to take advantage of the following after the leakage of Telugu question paper which happened on 3 April. If it was repeated on 4 April as well they will then be able to “create fear among the students and their parents and thereby defame the duly elected state government.”

Commissioner of police (Warangal) AV Ranganath said that there were WhatsApp chats between accused number two Prasanth and Bandi Sanjay and the latter in his press conference on paper leak repeated what was discussed in the WhatsApp chats. There were also many calls between the two. However, Bandi Sanjay did not submit his phone.

“Bandi Sanjay’s phone is found to be missing but we are waiting for the retrieval of call data and chats. They have deleted a few messages, call data we will retrieve those,” said the police commissioner.

Although the BJP alleged that its state president was arrested without a warrant, police said it followed law and had exercised its power under Section 41 CrPC.

Soon after his arrest, Bandi Sanjay tweeted, “Fear is real in BRS! First they stopped me from conducting the press meet and now they arrest me late at night. My only mistake is to question the BRS government on its wrong doings. Do not stop questioning the BRS Government even if I am jailed.”