LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Wednesday directed the Punjab chief secretary to submit within two days the report of an inquiry held into alleged leakage of question paper of Medical & Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT).

Earlier, Justice Shahid Waheed expressed serious concern over non-submission of the report and summoned the chief secretary on a short notice.

Chief Secretary Zahid Saeed appeared before the court and sought time to submit the report. However, he said two inquiries held so far failed to find any evidence of the alleged paper leakage.

The judge was hearing petitions filed by Wajihul Hassan and other candidates who appeared in the MDCAT conducted by the University of Health Sciences (UHS) on Aug 20 last for admission to MBBS.

The judge had already restrained the UHS from announcing the test result.

The petitioners through their counsel had argued that the MDCAT 2017 question paper was already leaked on social media by a teacher at a private college/academy in connivance with the UHA authorities.

They said the teacher who leaked the paper also confessed on social media to have sold the paper to a number of students for Rs50,000 each. They said career of a large number of students had been put at stake by the criminals involved in paper leak.

The petitioners said thousands of other students would suffer irreparable loss if the leaked paper was not declared void and the UHS was not ordered to hold the MDCAT afresh.

The judge extended the stay till Oct 6 and directed the chief secretary to submit the inquiry report.

Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2017