SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 11 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 12 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Select the most appropriate option to fill in the blank. Two of the fugitives managed to remain free by adeptly avoiding the____________ of the police.

(a)discovery
(b)pursuit
(c)repression
(d)following

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The blank sits inside the frame the ___ of the police, so it needs a noun naming something the police do to the fugitives.

Pursuit is that noun: the act of chasing someone in order to catch them. Two escapees stay free precisely by staying ahead of a pursuit.

The phrase also has to sound right after of, and pursuit of the police is the natural pairing — which is why option (b) fits where the other three read oddly.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
discovery — Discovery names the moment of finding, not the chase. You avoid discovery by the police; with of, the phrase says the police are the thing being discovered.
(c)
repression — Repression means holding down or suppressing by force, usually of a people, a protest or a feeling. It does not describe a police force chasing two individual escapees.
(d)
following — Following as a noun usually names a body of supporters — a singer with a large following. Even read as the act of following, the collocation fails: English calls a police chase a pursuit, not the following of the police.

Concept

This is a collocation question dressed as vocabulary. All four options are nouns, so grammar alone decides nothing.

What decides it is which noun the frame the ___ of the police can carry, and what the sentence needs it to mean: something two fugitives remain free by dodging.

English keeps close pairings here — police pursuit, in hot pursuit, hot on their heels. Pursuit is the one option that belongs to that set.

Watch the preposition. Discovery would work after a different one (avoiding discovery by the police), and a candidate who reads the sentence for gist instead of reading the frame often takes it.

Key facts

Pursuit is the noun for the act of chasing someone in order to catch them.
Repression means suppression by force, typically of protest, dissent or an emotion.
As a noun, a following means a group of supporters or admirers.

Study next

Noun collocations after of, such as pursuit of, fear of and knowledge ofChoosing between near-synonyms by preposition, as in discovery by against discovery ofEscape-and-capture vocabulary: fugitive, evade, detection, apprehend

Common traps

Picking discovery because avoiding discovery sounds right, without checking the of
Reaching for following because it means much the same thing, when the noun English pairs with the police is pursuit

SSC's plain fill-in-the-blank items offer four nouns or verbs that are close in sense and let the surrounding words decide. The 12 Sep 2024, 16:00 paper does it at English Q.15 (to ___ the ticket, confirm), and 10 Sep 2024, 16:00 at English Q.6.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.