The sleuths of Special Task Force (STF) claimed to have made another breakthrough in the police constables recruitment exam paper leak case by arresting seven persons, including six from Meerut district on Tuesday night.

The accused were said to be involved in the paper leak. It is claimed that after these arrests a big network can be exposed. Six of them were arrested from Kankarkheda area of Meerut and one from Gautam Buddha Nagar.

According to the STF, many important documents and mobile phones have been recovered. After the arrest, Kankarkhera police started an investigation.

According to an official communique, the six accused arrested in the police recruitment exam leak case are residents of different areas of Meerut. They have been identified as Deepu, Bittu, Praveen, Rohit, Naveen and Sahil. After the arrest, eight mobile phones, photocopy of question paper and answer key were also recovered from them. The accused are residents of Sardhana, TP Nagar and Kankarkhera areas of Meerut.

After the arrest, the STF has started an investigation. Names of many more people have also come forward.

Meanwhile, sources said that the STF on Tuesday also got an input that one Monu Pandit, a resident of Mathura, along with one of his associates, the leader of the gang that leaked the examination paper, was living in Mukherjee Nagar in Delhi and was trying to appoint youths as paper solvers.

The STF team laid a trap in Mukherjee Nagar area and found three youths standing at a crossing. The team immediately took Pramod Kumar Pathak aka Monu Pandit into custody. Pandit initially tried to take the STF team under pressure by claiming that he was holding the post of corporal in the Indian Air Force. He also showed the Air Force identity card, after which the STF team contacted the senior officials but before they could confirm the truth, Pathak himself broke down and confessed of being dismissed from his job in 2022.

The cops also checked his mobile and found a number of chats regarding the paper leak case. They also found a message of a person in which he enquired from Pathak about getting the work done for the recruitment exams.

It was also revealed that Pathak used to take Rs 3 lakh to Rs 14-15 lakh for leaking the papers to the youth appearing for the examination by claiming that he was working in the Air Force. He disclosed that his cousin brother-in-law Mohan, a resident of Aligarh, along with Gaurav, Ashish Paliwal, who is wanted in the Jhansi case, works to leak papers and arrange solvers. Pathak also disclosed that the paper was sent to him by Akhilesh Yadav from Varanasi and Rahul from Lucknow.

The STF also raided his house in Sector 37 of Noida from where they recovered 14 admit cards, all related to Haryana Staff Selection Examination. A red diary was also recovered from the house. The diary contains work done by the gang regarding paper leaks since 2017. A note in the diary states that in 2023, the Kendriya Vidyalaya examination paper was leaked, in which a friend from Banaras went to jail. Not only this, the exam of UP Forest 2022 was also leaked in collaboration with Akhilesh. Apart from this, the jail warden exam paper was leaked in 2019.

Apart from this, two sets of papers totaling 14 pages were recovered from the possession of the accused. He said that the recovered papers were the same which came in the second shift of the Uttar Pradesh police constables recruitment examination.

Further interrogations are on by the STF team.