Millions of Indian students have to retake exams after leak

Indian officials have announced that an investigation is underway after high school exam papers were leaked in advance, meaning millions of students will have to resit their finals.

Education minister Prakash Javadekar said mathematics and economics papers were spread to students through WhatsApp prior to the exam.

“The criminals who did this won’t be spared,” he said. “I am sure police will catch these people soon. Let me assure that we will further improve the system and make it foolproof.”

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Cheating on exams is “common” in India, says The Guardian, with students regularly paying “large bribes”, buying test papers, or even resorting to “more elaborate ruses”. In 2015, hundreds of people were arrested in eastern Bihar state for “scaling the walls of schools and providing crib sheets and study materials to their relatives during exams”, in images shared around the world.

In May last year, school authorities came under fire for asking a student to remove her bra in public before a test to make sure she wasn’t hiding any notes.

A member of the main opposition party, Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter to use the exam leak to “revive an attack on Modi’s administration over digital security”.

Police officials investigating the leak said 25 people, including students and tutors, had been questioned so far but no arrests had been made, The Indian Express reports.

“For now, we are trying to establish the trail of this leak. Most people we have spoken with only received it on WhatsApp,” said the special commissioner of police, RP Upadhyay.