Its investigation clearly established irregularities in the conduct of NEET, and, more importantly, tracked the origin of the leak to a Jharkhand school.
It was Sunday, the morning of May 5; a day when 2.4 million students thronged examination halls across the country to sit for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), or NEET-UG, a national examination for admission to medical programmes. The Patna division of the Bihar Police received a phone call from colleagues in Jharkhand with a tip-off. There was a car moving around in the city, they were told, and they suspected that there was something amiss—its occupants were possibly working to circumvent the examination process. They had no description of the car, but crucially, had four digits of a vehicle registration number — 0019.
A CBI team exits the Economic Offences Unit (EOU) office in Patna in NEET paper leak case, on Tuesday,25, 2024. (Santosh Kumar/ Hindustan Times)