Candidate applies for ICSE recheck, gets email threats

KOLKATA: An ICSE candidate, who wanted to get his papers rechecked through the Indian School Certificate Examination council’s website, ended up getting his email ID hacked and a revised marksheet that the council later disowned. The incident was followed by a series of threats that the student received over emails asking him not to approach the police.


A central Kolkata school student and Baranagar’s Kamar Para Road resident, Rudrashis Bardhan got his ICSE result last month and applied for recheck of three papers as he was not satisfied with his scores. On May 15, he applied for the same through the council’s official portal — results.cisce-.org. He created an account on the website using his email ID and paid an amount of Rs 3,000 as rechecking fees. “I received a receipt along with recheck request reference number. The next day, I got another email saying that my request for recheck was received,” he said.

On May 18, Bardhan received an email that said his marks for the subjects have been updated. Later on the same day, he received another email saying that the marks will be visible on the council’s website on May 19. As he did not find any such revised marks on the council’s website, he sent an email to the council.

“My son got a reply that said the rechecking process will be completed at the earliest. Later he received a revised marksheet purportedly issued by the council. This continued for some time and he got another email on May 25 saying there shall be no change in marks unless sufficient documents are sent to the council by post,” said his father Biswajit.

When the Bardhans finally called up the council’s Noida office, they were told that no such communication was done nor any revised marksheet issued. “When we gave them the recheck request number they cross-checked and confirmed that the payment was received,” said Biswajit.

When contacted, council CEO Gerry Arathoon said, “I am not aware of any such complaint. Nothing has come to the council till now.”

The situation turned worse when Rudrashis started getting emails, warning him not to go to the police else the entire process would be wasted. “It was worrying as he received another email on the day he went to Lalbazar along with his father. Later that day, he received an email saying that nothing could be done even by the cybercell,” his lawyer Bivas Chatterjee said. The lawyer claimed that the email addresses of both the father and son had been hacked.

Later, Rudrashis got a slew of emails from his father’s email ID. “It was evident that my address was hacked. We could also figure that somebody was keeping a tab on our movements,” said Biswajit. On Monday, they lodged a complaint with the Barrackpore Commissionerate.