ISLAMABAD, April 12 (APP): Spacial Committee of Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) to probe in to the matter of leakage of questions has found, “Strong and foolproof mechanisms were in place to maintain secrecy and confidentiality of question papers as well as other related information.”
Chairman FPSC, keeping in view the gravity of the issue of alleged leakage of questions of the question papers for Central Superior Services (CSS) Exam 2017, immediately constituted a departmental committee headed member FPSC with the mandate to probe into the matter internally, a press release said.
“The Committee suspected the (Face Book) account in question to be fake and information to be of edited category.”
Despite the report of the committee, the FPSC without complacence waited for the report of the Federal Investigation Authority’s investigation.
Finally, the FIA was able to track the original perpetrator behind this cyber crime and arrested him from Faisalabad. His name was identified to be Muhammad Arif Khan. During investigation, following was establish by the FIA:
(i) That the claim of Muhammad Arif Khan viz a viz guess questions pertaining to CBS-2017 examination was a stand alone act and was totally divorced from reality.
Muhammad Arif Khan had appeared almost 17 times, before the FPSC, as a candidate against various posts. However, he could not qualify in any of such attempts. Such repeated failures infuriated him to an extent that he, in order to vent his failure, undertook cyber crime against FPSC.
(ii) That on February 16, Muhammad Arif Khan edited his earlier posts and thereby tried to prove the veracity of his claims.
(iii) That Muhammad Arif Khan had no access to the FPSC database meaning thereby that the systems of FPSC were impregnable to date.
The FIA has registered First Information Report (FIR) in this regard
and the suspect is being challaned in the relevant court of law. With this the perpetrator of such cyber crime would be brought to justice.
While the happenings were in the process, some sections of electronic and print media were gullible enough to pick up the story that had appeared in a National Daily on 18-02-2017 and started an unfortunate controversy by virtue of which a national institution like FPSC came under a question mark. Had such brethren waited for a while, in that eventuality real truth could have been placed before the public at large.
The FPSC release referring the news item said, as regards availability of few guess questions on the social media (Facebook) relating to CBS-2017 compulsory papers of English Essay and Current Affairs, prior to actual conduct of the said papers.
It was alleged that two topics related to English Essay and two questions related to Current Affairs papers were similar to the guess questions placed on the social media, on January 26 and 31, by some Facebook account holder under the title ‘Sadia Kousar’.
As per news item, the said Facebook user had been charging money for sharing of such guess questions.
The CBS-2017 papers were held from February 16, to 25; and papers of English Essay and Current Affairs were held on February 16 and 17 respectively.
Chairman FPSC took immediate and serious note of this news item.
As the guess questions were placed on the social media and related to cyber space beyond the control of FPSC, hence it was immediately reported to the FIA for investigation, which made aggressive investigation into the matter and were all along provided sterling support from FISC authorities.
As the concerned Facebook account was deactivated/ deleted by the user therefore the FIA sought help from Facebook authorities for locating the IP address/contact details of the holder of the account.
The FIA has also been in contact with other agencies and departments including Notational Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), Integrated Border Security System to trace the account holder.
