CA Exam Answer Sheets Found With Unauthorised Person in Kolkata

ICAI, the body that conducts the exam, hasn’t made an announcement on the issue, leaving many questions unanswered.

Kolkata Police found 250 Chartered Accountancy exam answer sheets at the residence of an unauthorised individual named Pabitra Ray.

(Photo: Erum Gour/The Quint)

On 24 July, Kolkata Police found 250 Chartered Accountancy exam answer sheets at the residence of an unauthorised individual named Pabitra Ray. The answer sheets are of a CA exam conducted in June 2019.

Ray, an accountant who works at a CA firm, is not an authorised examiner of the Chartered Accountancy exam. Police say that he was checking the answer sheets on behalf of his employer Surajit Dutta, who was the authorised examiner for those copies.

Both Ray and Dutta have now been arrested, but the incident raises questions about the integrity of the exam and the manner in which the papers are checked. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) is the organisation that conducts the CA exams.

The Institute said it “has already initiated steps to proceed against the delinquent examiner and person in illegal possession of the answer books."

How It All Went All Down

• Based on a tip-off, police officials raided a house in Kolkata’s Bagbazar area on Wednesday night.
  
• After finding the answer sheets in Ray’s possession, the cops began questioning him. Ray revealed that he had been asked to check those answer sheets by a man named Surajit Dutta, who was the authorised examiner for those copies.
  
• The police then went to Dutta’s house, where they found around 300 more answer sheets for which Dutta himself is the authorised examiner. Dutta is a chartered accountant who has his own firm, where Pabitra Ray is an employee.
  
• Dutta had violated regulations and asked Ray to check the 250 copies.
  
• Kolkata Police arrested both Dutta and Ray. They have now been granted bail under certain conditions. The cops have also reached out to ICAI, the organisation that conducts the exam, and are open to probing their role in the matter if need be.

The Implications

The Quint had sent the following questions to the ICAI seeking clarifications:

1. What steps will the ICAI take to ensure that the copies of those 250 students are now properly checked, by an authorised examiner?
   
2. What about the other copies that Surajit Dutta was supposed to check? Will they be assigned to a different examiner now?
   
3. What further actions will ICAI take to ensure that unauthorised examiners are not allowed to check answer sheets? How will ICAI ensure that other authorised examiners are not doing what Surajit Dutta did?
   
4. Is ICAI aware of such a practice or does it believe that this is a one-off incident?
   
5. If proper restrictions on the authorised examiners are not in place, then how can the ICAI know that this phenomenon is not more widespread?

Responding to the questions, the ICAI said, “An instance of Examination books being in illegal possession by an unauthorised person has recently been reported at Kolkata involving around 500 copies. It is clarified that ICAI examination system is totally robust and this instance is an aberration. The system runs through codified numbers and it is not possible to ascertain the identity of examinee or examination centre by any examiner or anyone else. The Institute has already initiated steps to proceed against the delinquent examiner and person in illegal possession of the answer books.”