PATNA:  Thousands of answer sheets of candidates who took Class 10 examinations conducted by the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) this year and which later went missing were on Saturday recovered from a scrap dealer's shop.


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Nearly 42,000 BSEB Class 10 board answer sheets had gone missing from the strong room of a school - SS Balika Inter School in Gopalganj - where they were kept after evaluation last week.


Those missing answer sheets were recovered by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Bihar Police from a scrap dealer's shop, the reports said.


The SIT also arrested two persons in the connection.


Acting on specific information, the SIT raided a shop at Hajiyapur in Gopalganj district and recovered all copies of answer sheets that went missing last week. 


The team arrested the scrap dealer and his helper for purchasing them.


According to the police, shopkeeper Pappu Gupta revealed that a peon Chotu Singh of a government-run school had sold the answer sheets for Rs 8,500 to him last week.


Following the reports in local Hindi dailies last week that 42,000 copies of answer sheets had gone missing from SS Balika Inter School in Gopalganj, an FIR was filed and school Principal was detained and interrogated by the police.


The Patna High Court has taken cognizance of reports and asked the state government to come up with an explanation within a month.


Around 17.7 lakh students had appeared for the BSEB 2018 Class 10th exam.


In 2017, just half of the students (50.12 percent) had managed to clear the Class 10th exam.


The incident had further tarnished the BSEB's image which had drawn widespread condemnation in the wake of "toppers scam" when non-deserving students were declared top rankers in Arts as well science streams out of materialistic considerations in 2016.


(With IANS inputs)