Sources said question papers might have been leaked as the state government plans to use marks of students from Class VIII and IX in the Class X examination from 2018-19 academic year. Cyber security police said though there were no official complaints against the misuse of WhatsApp in the city so far, they had booked 15 cases on misuse of Facebook last year.

The police said Facebook was often used to tarnish the image of a rival through fake accounts. "Scorned lovers mostly create fake Facebook accounts and insult the other person," the police said.

Easy access to smartphones and the internet are reasons behind the rise of such practices. "Some users commit the mistake of forwarding or sharing these abusive messages. Sharing and forwarding of abusive things is also a crime," said the police officer.

In a recent case, questions of the social studies paper of Class IX examinations were circulated through WhatsApp in the city. A week before the Secondary School Certificate (SSC), English question paper-1 was circulated in Khammam district. Cyber security police is witnessing a rise in the practice of misusing social networking sites like Facebook and mobile apps like WhatsApp in the city.

Apart from vulgar messages, miscreants are using WhatsApp to leak question papers of school examinations.

Visakhapatnam district educational officer CV Renuka told that no police complaint was lodged as they wanted to probe the matter once the exams were over. "However, as a precautionary measure, we restricted use of phones in or near all examination halls," Renuka said.