Caught red handed!
There is apparently no respite from the attempts to leak out questions by a section of unscrupulous teachers during the public examinations as three were caught red-handed yesterday.
The three teachers along with a student were jailed for different terms after they were arrested while preparing answers to the questions leaked out minutes before the beginning of yesterday's Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations in Dhaka and Patuakhali.
In Dhaka, the arrestees are Sifat Jasmine Noor, assistant professor of biology at College of Development Alternative (CODA), and Mehedi Hassan, an HSC candidate, said police and officials of Dhaka Education Board.
They were held in front of a restaurant outside the examination centre of Lalmatia Women's College around 10:00am as they were providing answers to questions obtained through mobile phone, Jamal Uddin Mir, officer-in-charge of Mohammadpur police, told The Daily Star.
A mobile court led by executive magistrate Md Tofazzal Hossain sentenced Sifat to two years' imprisonment and Mehedi to one month and sent them to jail. Mehedi is a student of Tejgaon College who was sitting for biology exam at the centre yesterday.
Adaitya Kumar Saha, deputy controller of Dhaka Education Board, told The Daily Star, “The drive was conducted on the basis of information we received on Monday.”
He said they had come to know that a group of college teachers were assembling at the restaurant during the ongoing HSC examinations and preparing answers to the questions they “somehow managed to get from the centre”.
He further said he had informed the matter to the education ministry and the deputy commissioner of Dhaka and decided to conduct a drive in the area. As planned, officials of the ministry and the education board, the mobile court and members of police were present there since morning.
“Minutes before the beginning of the exam, we caught Sifat and Mehedi red-handed while they were preparing the answers,” Adaitya said.
Asked how the arrestees got the questions, he said, “It is still not clear how they got the questions.” He, however, said they did not get the time needed for detailed interrogation as they were instantly jailed.
“The senior officials present there decided not to file a regular case and they were punished instantly,” he added.
Contacted, Prof Dr Swapan Kumar Das, principal of CODA, told The Daily Star that Sifat Jasmine was the teacher of the institution's hostel unit who went there to facilitate the hostel students' entrance to the exam centre.
Defending Sifat, he said, “As far as I know some students were asking her questions and she might be trying to answer them. She was arrested right at that moment.
“She might not know if the questions were leaked out or not,” the principal argued.
However, the college authorities had suspended the teacher and formed an investigation committee, he added.
In Patuakhali, two teachers -- Khalilur Rahman, hall superintendent and lecturer of accounting at Akkel Ali College, and Shafiqul Islam, lecturer of computer science at Haji Mokhter Ali Mridha College, were held while preparing the answers around 9:30am, Khondaker Mostafijur Rahman, OC of Patuakhali police, confirmed.
Police sources said both the teachers were preparing answer sheets for the examinees of “accounting science and applied policies” paper after taking photo of the question from the centre. They were preparing the answers at a nearby house, our correspondent reports.
A mobile court led by executive magistrate Anu Das jailed them for two years each. The mobile court also fined Shafiqul Islam Tk 10,000, the OC added.
The HSC and its equivalent examinations began across the country on April 2 and some 11.83 lakh examinees from 8,864 institutions under 10 education boards have been taking part in the exams.
Referring to some incidents of alleged question leakage in SSC and equivalent examinations, Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid on several occasions put the blame on a section of teachers.
“We have made all-out arrangements to stop the leakage, but where would we go if a section of our teachers leak it out?” the minister said.
Comments