Bombay High Court relief for student held in paper leak case

The Bombay High Court has granted bail to a student who was arrested in April in a case where question papers of TYBCom Marketing and Human Resources were leaked an hour before the scheduled examination on WhatsApp.

Justice AR Joshi granted bail to Pratik Mehta against surety of Rs 25,000 and directed him to report to crime branch every Monday and Thursday.

Ashok Saraogi, advocate for Mehta, argued that investigation as far as Mehta is concerned is over. The police have already seized his mobile phone and hence his further custodial interrogation was not required, argued Saraogi.

Additional public prosecutor SV Gajare argued that Mehta had sent the image of the relevant question paper to 32 other students on payment. The police has questioned those 32 students and seized their mobiles as well.

Granting bail to Mehta, Justice Joshi said that the prime suspect in the case was an employee of a college and it was possible that somebody else from the concerned college had access to the question papers. "In the opinion of this court, on certain conditions the present applicant (Mehta) can be released on bail mainly considering his custody since 7th April, 2014."

A complaint regarding the paper leak was lodged by Mumbai University official Dr Padma Deshmukh. On February 4, an examination for Marketing and Human Resources Management was supposed to be held at 11 am.

The procedure for sending the question papers to respective centres was through e-mail and the question papers were being sent in encrypted form. After giving the password to the centre in-charge, the question papers were to be printed and distributed to students.

However, an hour before the exam, a person called Deshmukh, saying the question paper was already available on WhatsApp.