Amid the ongoing controversy over the paper leak case in the Himachal Pradesh police recruitment examination, the state police, on Wednesday, claimed to have solved the case with the arrest of five persons including the mastermind from Bihar.

A police official said Arvind Kumar, Sudhir Yadav, Gore Lal, Gautam Kumar Bharti, and Subodh Kumar, all residents of Nawada in Bihar, were allegedly involved in the paper leak case. They have been arrested by a team of Mandi police.

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Arvind is said to have been the mastermind of the entire scam. It was Sudhir, who works in a printing press, who leaked the paper at his behest while the rest distributed the paper among gangs from Bihar, UP, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi and Himachal for circulation among prospective candidates in lieu of money, he added.

The official stated that till date, 121 persons have been arrested in the case including 85 candidates, 3 parents of the candidates and 33 agents (18 from HP and 15 from other states).

While two of the three coaching centres were also booked by Kangra police, one (Bhasker Coaching Centre, Rohtak) is under the scanner of Una police.

The cops are interrogating the accused to extract more details about the entire scam. All the evidence procured in the investigation will be submitted to the CBI once they take over the case, he further stated.

It is worth mentioning here that around 74,000 candidates had appeared for recruitment to the 1,334 posts of constables including 932 males, 311 females and 94 male constables for driver posts at 81 examination centers in 11 districts.

The examination was held on 27 March and the result of the written test was declared on 5 April.

The fraud had come to light in the scrutiny of the documents of the candidates. It was found that three of the candidates had secured 70 marks each from a total 90 marks. However, the aggregate of the marks they obtained in the matriculation examination was less than 50 percent. This raised suspicion among the examiners.

While being questioned by the cops about the anomaly, the trio broke down and allegedly admitted to cheating. They admitted that they had paid a sum of Rs 6-8 lakh for answers in the examination to be memorised before the examination.