March 24, 200422 yr AUTHORITIES in India locked 168 high school students and 24 parents in a detention centre after accusing them of cheating in exams, officials said today. More than 500,000 students took the 10th-grade final exams yesterday in eastern Bihar state under the watchful gaze of 5000 police and 1000 civil officials at 850 testing centres. Each detainee will have to pay a fine of 2000 rupees ($60) and none of the students will have a chance to retake the exam, said Hasan Waris, secretary of the Bihar School Examination Board. He gave no details of how the students cheated. School authorities said they found a number of students were also keeping photographs of movie and cricket stars for good luck in their pockets in violation of school rules. Boys' favourite pictures were of Bollywood starlets such as Madhuri Dixit and Kareena Kapoor or cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly, while girls had pictures of film heartthrob Shah Rukh Khan. Last month in Bihar, police fired on high school students who torched vehicles to protest administrative action against cheating, leaving two people dead, officials said.
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