Telangana BJP Chief Bandi Sanjay Sent To Judicial Custody Till April 19 In Paper Leak Case

Police has named Sanjay as the first accused in the FIR. He allegedly hatched a plan with other accused to leak the Class 10 question paper.

Telangana BJP president and MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar, who was arrested in Karimnagar on Tuesday, was sent to judicial custody till April 19 by a court in Hanamkonda on Wednesday in the Class 10 question paper leak case.

Police has named Sanjay as the first accused in the FIR. He allegedly hatched a plan with other accused to leak the Class 10 question paper. Police arrested him on charges of criminal conspiracy, malpractices in SSC public exams with an intention to spread rumours and disrupt the peaceful conduct of the ongoing SSC exams in the state.

According to police, Bandi Sanjay hatched a plan with the help of other accused Prashanth and Moutam Shiva Ganesh to leak the ongoing SSC exam papers by circulating them on Whatsapp.

Police charged the second and third accused Prashanth and Mahesh with sending a minor boy to the examination centre in Kamalapur at the behest of the first accused, Sanjay. The minor boy trespassed into the exam centre, scaled the compound wall and clicked an image of the Hindi question paper from one student in one of the rooms in the first floor, the police said. The picture of the question paper was then allegedly forwarded to a WhatsApp group SSC 2019-2020 exam and subsequently circulated on other groups.

The accused have been booked under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating), and 505 (circulating any report or statement with an intent to cause alarm to the public).

Police have also invoked sections 4 (A), 6 of the TS Public Examinations (Prevention of Malpractices) Act, and Section 66(D) of the Information Technology Act. The sections are non-bailable, and if convicted, the guilty may face a jail sentence of 3 to 7 years.

Police said Sanjay spoke to Prashanth several times on the phone and texted him before and after the leak.

Warangal Police Commissioner AV Ranganath said Sanjay refused to give his mobile phone to the police and deleted a lot of data. He said they would retrieve the call and chat data even if it was deleted.

(With inputs from ABP Desam — It is a Telugu platform of ABP News. For more news, commentary and latest happenings from two Telugu states, follow https://telugu.abplive.com//amp)