Headmasters caught cheating in exams in Bangalore

Two headmasters and an assistant head master of Government High Schools in Bangalore were caught red-handed by the police after they were found replacing the original answer scripts of more than 35 students appearing for the SSLC examinations with fake ones in a bid to help them pass the crucial exams.

Police said the head masters of Government High School of Goripalya and Chickpet, Thimmaiah, 57, and Venkatesh, 42, who are incidentally brothers, besides the assistant head master of Government High School of Padarayanapura M Jeerappa, 30, had accepted money from 35 “repeater” students, who had been struggling to clear the examinations, with the promise of providing them pass marks.

Ever since the examinations began last week, the trio was dutifully engaged in removing the original answer scripts of the 35 students from the bundle at the Goripalya High School and replace them with answer scripts, obtained fraudulently and written by bright students. During the six days of the examination, the fraudsters had replaced more than 180 to 200 answer scripts with doctored scripts before depositing the bundles to the office of the Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB).

But, their luck ran out on the last day of the examination when the J J Nagar Police Sub Inspector Lingaraju, acting on a tip-off, rushed to the Government High School at Goripalya, where the three teachers were replacing the answer scripts of Social Studies examination.

The police seized the original as well as the replaced answer scripts and took the teachers into custody. They were produced before the magistrate and charged with cheating and forgery.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Bangalore West, K V Sharathchandra told reporters that Thimmaiah and Venkatesh had been appointed as route offices by the KSEEB for collecting the answer scripts from the examination centres and depositing them with the KSEEB office.

The Fort High School, where the 35 repeater students had appeared for the examination, was among the schools assigned to Venkatesh. After collecting the answer scripts from the school, Venkatesh brought them to the Goripalya High School, which was not an examination Centre, to replace them with fraudulently written ones.

KSEEB Director T M Kumar told reporters that the Department will initiate action against even the students involved in the racket. “They will be debarred from the examination”, he said.