'Shoot the messenger' is Yogi Govt's reaction to exam paper leak

Lucknow: Leakage of examination papers is nothing new to Uttar Pradesh, where the existence of an examination mafia is an open secret for decades. What is new, however, is the drastic police action against journalists who were responsible for exposing the racket now.

As many as 34 persons have been arrested in the case so far. These include three scribes who were put behind bars by the police on Friday in Ballia, the remote eastern district along the Bihar border, where the most recent incident of leakage of Class 12 English paper was reported a few days ago.

The sequence of events clearly reveals how deep the roots of this mafia are. Digvijay Singh is the local correspondent of popular Hindi daily Amar Ujala, which carried the news in its edition the following day.

Singh, who had exposed the paper leak in his newspaper, was intimidated by cops, after they trapped him into sending a copy of the leaked examination question paper. They also took into custody another Amar Ujala journalist Ajit Kumar Ojha who had edited the copy. That was followed by the arrest of Manoj Gupta, a local scribe working for Rashtriya Sahara, with whom Singh had apparently shared the news.

According to other Ballia scribes, after the story was out in Amar Ujala, Digvijay Singh received a call on his mobile from both the district magistrate and the district inspector of schools. They asked him to WhatsApp a picture of the leaked paper. And no sooner did he do so, cops knocked at his door and used the WhatsApp picture as evidence against the scribe to book him as an accomplice in the crime.

Singh was grilled by the police, who subsequently picked up the two other journalists connected with him, and the three were sent to jail on the charge that they were also involved in the paper leak. Repeated plea and appeals of the scribes, pleading that they had only carried out their journalistic duty, fell on deaf ears and they were packed off to prison by evening.

Significantly, the news of the arrest of journalists did not find a place in the majority of the mainstream media – be it print or electronic. That too was attributable to the government's control over the mainstream media.

Scribes see the arrests as an indirect warning to other nosey journalists who believe in investigative journalism and consider it their primary duty to expose ills under any regime.

"It is pretty evident that the Ballia administration is more keen on dissuading the media from reporting misdeeds of officials involved in running the systems", observed senior journalist Alok Joshi, who is the former Managing Editor of CNBC Awaz.

Sanjay Kapoor, general secretary of the Editor's Guild of India felt, "the action against journalists was part of the government's tendency to curb the freedom of the press. "Such tactics have been tried and practiced in states like Kashmir, where many journalists were similarly brought on their knees for reporting facts." He said, "this matter would be taken up by the Guild with the government."

Meanwhile, the Special Task Force (STF), that had been entrusted with the paper leak case, has managed to get many important leads and establish the nexus between officials and the organized gang involved in the leakage. It is said that besides leakage, the gang also provides paper solvers, who sit down as imposters for the real examinees.

According to reports, STF sleuths have also traced the links between parents of examinees and certain coaching institutes that are believed to be neck deep in the paper leak racket.

What is strange is that the district magistrate of Ballia was still trying to wash his hands off the whole episode by claiming, "no examination paper got leaked in Ballia." Additional chief secretary (secondary education) Aradhana Shukla has also issued a clarification claiming "no tampering" of papers.

While UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed officials to invoke the National Security Act (NSA) against the accused, who are mostly teachers, there is no word yet from any government authority about the reason for arrest of journalists.

This was not the first time that the UP government had acted in such arbitrary manner against journalists. A Kerala based scribe S.Kappan was booked for mere apprehension of breach of peace while he was on his way to track the infamous Hathras gangrape incident in September 2020. Kappan is still in jail and has not been able to get bail so far.

During the peak of Covid-19, at least two scribes were jailed for highlighting the failures of the Yogi administration in handling the woes of common people. In 2021, a journalist was booked and arrested for showing videos of 'roti' being served with just salt in the name of midday meal in a particular district. The district magistrate had gone to the extent of going on record to question the scribe, "why did he make a video when he was a print journalist?"

Evidently, each of the cases reflects how the UP administration blatantly follows the principle of 'shooting the messenger'.