HYDERABAD, May 17: A total of 289 students appearing in Sindhi and Urdu Higher Secondary Certificate part II exams were caught cheating on Friday in Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas and Larkana divisions.

In Hyderabad, division 78 second year students were caught cheating by officials of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE), Hyderabad, while one invigilator (first papers for Urdu and Sindhi) was disqualified because of irresponsibility, according to a press release issued by the BISE Hyderabad. Out of the total cases, 77 were copy cases while one was of impersonating another candidate.

A total of 43,125 candidates are appearing in second year examinations in nine districts of Sindh in the jurisdiction of BISE Hyderabad. The districts include Hyderabad, Badin, Matiari, Shaheed Benazirabad, Jamshoro, Dadu, Tando Mohammad Khan, Tando Allahyar and Thatta.

Meanwhile, vigilance teams of the BISE Hyderabad are paying surprise visits to various examination centres to prevent and check copy culture.

During surprise visits to various educational institutions, BISE chairman Prof Engineer Aleemuddin Khanzada caught four candidates busy cheating and also disqualified an invigilator. Rest of the cases were caught by 22 other vigilance teams.

Our Mirpurkhas correspondent adds: The first HSC exam scheduled for May 16 had been postponed because of a province-wide strike, however the second exam was held on Friday as per schedule.

Around 22 students were caught cheating by vigilance teams of BISE Mirpurkhas which carried out surprise visits at 56 examination centres set up across Mirpurkhas division including Mirpurkhas, Sanghar, Umerkot and Tharparkar districts where a total of 37,551 students appeared in exams.