Case on exam paper leak to be closed

Dubai Attorney-General Issam Issa Al Humaidan has ordered to close a case against six pupils and a 22-year-old Emirati on the answer leak of the class 12 biology paper.

Mohammed Rustom Bu Abdullah, Chief Prosecutor of the Family and Juvenile Prosecution, said that the case would be closed and the pupils would not be referred to the Juvenile Court as the investigation could not identify the main suspect who had leaked the answers. The Public Prosecution concluded that none of the pupils who were quizzed had the criminal intention to divulge the confidential information at the time when they exchanged the answers. Thus the Public Prosecution has deemed that there were no grounds for a criminal case to be levelled against any of them for absence of malice.

The six students (aged between 17 and 19) and the brother of one of them, a 22-year-old employee at a government sector department, exchanged the answers by electronic means including the BlackBerry messenger in the morning on the exam day without being aware that they had the real answers of the exam. Upon entering the exam hall, the pupils were surprised that those were the real answers for the biology paper.

Earlier Bu Abdullah told Khaleej Times that his prosecution had been interrogating the students and the 22-year-old man to determine whether the portal of the Ministry of Education has been hacked during the third semester exams of high schools. The investigation was in connection with the leak of the answers of the class 12 biology question paper, literary section. It is the first case of its kind to be handled by the Family and Juvenile Prosecution since its inception in 2009.

“The case started when the Ministry of Education reported to Al Qusais police station regarding the leak of the answers of the biology question paper via BlackBerry, Twitter and emails. Through investigation it was known that the answers were posted on a website www.study4uae.com and from there students circulated the answers later via BlackBerry messenger, Twitter and emails.

Bu Abdullah revealed that the 22-year-old suspect admitted that his juvenile brother, 17, got the answers from another student via BlackBerry messenger. The other student said the same about another suspect and so on.

“The main accused in the leak of the answers has yet to be identified. All the suspects are denying they were aware the answers were authentic. They thought it was kind of a prank and circulated them out of curiosity. The eldest among them, the 22-year-old, said that he removed the answers from the Internet when he knew they were correct,” Bu Abdullah said earlier.

mary@khaleejtimes.com