Class XII students of the Central Board of Secondary Education had a scare just hours before their maths exam was to start on Monday.

Police claimed they had arrested two people for selling question paper of the exam. It later turned out that the paper was fake.

Jeevan Rastogi and his son Arpit were arrested by the Economic Offences Wing in a raid on the coaching centre run by them in the Chandni Chowk area of north Delhi, Deputy Commissioner of Police (EOW) Prabhakar said.

They were selling a question paper, which they claimed to be of the CBSE Class 12 examination, which was to start at 1030 IST.

EOW officials went to the office of the CBSE at Preet Vihar in east Delhi at around 0900 IST with a photocopy of the paper to verify if the paper had indeed been leaked.

CBSE Chairman Ashok Ganguly later announced that the paper was not the one set by the CBSE.

"We have matched the seized question paper with all the nine sets of the paper to be distributed to students. Not even a single question matched and we will hold the examination as scheduled," he told reporters.

He said the paper seized from the father-son duo did not even match the structured pattern followed by the CBSE. "Any serious student can tell at one glance that it is a fake," he said.

Ganguly said the whole operation had been carried out by 'mischievous elements, who wanted to make quick money'.

For a few hours, however, there was panic among students who reached their examination centres without being sure whether the exam would be held.

"We have prepared for this examination throughout the year and to be told hours before its start that the question paper has been leaked is really shocking," said Sanjiv, a student of Delhi Public School, Mathura Road, shortly before he got the news that the test would be held as per schedule.

Police sources said several students were present at the Taxila Coaching Institute at the time of the raid. They were being questioned, the sources said.