The Human Resource Ministry on Sunday said a Central Board of Secondary Education official has been suspended for alleged lax supervision of the Class 12 economics examination, ANI reported. Human Resource Ministry Secretary A Swarup said an inquiry has been initiated into the matter and identified the official as KS Rana.

Human Resources Minister Prakash Javadekar ordered his suspension, Union Education Secretary Anil Swarup said on Twitter.

The suspension follows the arrest of two teachers and the owner of a coaching centre earlier in the day for allegedly being involved in the leak of the Class 12 economics paper conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education.

On March 31, the Jharkhand Police apprehended 12 people, including students and private tutors, in connection with the Class 10 mathematics question paper leaks. The accused in Jharkhand had allegedly exchanged leaked questions for money and then supplied their answers to students at examination centres. The Jharkhand Police, however, could not trace the source of the leaks.

The three persons arrested in Delhi on Sunday were identified as Rishabh, Rohit and Tauqeer. Rishabh and Rohit are teachers at a government school in Outer Delhi, which was also an examination centre. Tauqeer runs a coaching institute, the Delhi Police said.

Rohit and Rishabh allegedly used to open the question paper seals around 30 minutes before the designated time, take their photographs and send them to Tauqeer through WhatsApp. Tauqeer would then answer as many questions as possible and hand them over to his students before they entered the exam centres. The designated time to open the sealed container of answer sheets is 9.45 am, which is 15 minutes before the examinations start.

The police are investigating insider roles in the paper leaks and are likely to question CBSE officials. The police have said that they are still probing money trails in connection with exchange of the leaked papers, but they have not got any concrete evidence on this yet.

On Saturday, the police received a response from tech giant Google on details of email addresses used to leak the question papers.

The central government has faced massive backlash after the question papers of the Class 10 mathematics exam and Class 12 economics test were leaked. The CBSE chairperson had been informed of one of the leaks via email, but said the examinations could not be cancelled without verifying the information received. Dates for Class 12 economic paper re-tests has been announced while the decision for the Class 10 mathematics paper will be taken later.