Bengaluru: The arrest of Kumaraswamy alias Kiran, the nephew of the alleged kingpin Shivakumaraiah, has revealed that the II PUC Chemistry question papers were leaked from the Hangal sub-treasury in Haveri district, with a second division assistant (SDA) providing the keys of the strongroom to him.
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) said that Kiran enlisted the support of Santosh Parshuram Agasimani, the SDA, by paying him Rs one lakh in cash.

Two days before the Chemistry exam, on the night of March 29, Agasimani gave Kiran the keys of the strongroom. Kiran opened the seal of the bundle, photographed the paper on his mobile phone and resealed it.

Kiran left to Tumakuru. He noticed that the image of the paper was not good. So he wrote down the questions on a paper, photographed it and sent it a few people on WhatsApp including Obalaraju, the personal assistant of Medical Education Minister Sharanprakash Patil, Manjunath, a physical education teacher at a private school in Vijayanagar, and another man named Rudrappa.

CID officials informed that that those people then sold the question paper to students for hefty sums. Around 3,000 students had the question paper.

Kiran decided to get the paper again as the exam was rescheduled. He again went through the same route on the night of March 29.
 
The CID had arrested Manjunath, Obalaraju, Rudrappa and two others. But Kiran didn’t know about Manjunath’s arrest. He sent him the second paper too by WhatsApp. The CID, which had Manjunath’s mobile phone, began tracking Kiran.

And finally, Kiran was arrested from a farmhouse in Tumakuru on Tuesday by the CID.

The CID officials also arrested Agasimani, a native of Uttara Kannada who was living in Adoor, Haveri district. A CID officer said more arrests were likely as they had examined the sub-treasury in Hangal.