NEET-UG leak case: CBI arrests key conspirator

With the arrest of two more persons from Patna and Hazaribagh, the Central Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday said that the one of those apprehended was a key conspirator in the question paper leak in the undergraduate medical entrance examinations.

The arrested individuals were identified as Pankaj Kumar, alias Aditya, and Rajkumar Singh, alias Raju. Kumar, a 2017-batch civil engineer from the National Institute of Technology in Jamshedpur, was arrested from Patna; Singh was arrested in Hazaribagh in Jharkhand.

Kumar was a bigger player than Rajesh Ranjan, alias Rocky, who was arrested on July 11 from Dhanbad in Jharkhand, CBI officials said, declining to be named.

Kumar, a resident of Bokaro in Jharkhand, stole the question paper from a National Testing Agency’s trunk in Hazaribagh and distributed it to other members of the gang, an official said. Singh allegedly helped Kumar in the theft, and later in distributing it to other gang members. During interrogation, the arrested confessed that they committed the crime in order to earn money, the official added.

A CBI spokeperson also claimed that Rajkumar Singh alias Raju also played a role in helping Pankaj Kumar steal the question paper.

Singh runs a guest house at Ram Nagar Chowk in Hazaribagh. Some of the aspirants reportedly stayed in the guest house and were in touch with arrested Oasis school principal Ehsanul Haque, and vice-principal Imtiaz Alam. The federal agency has sealed the guest house.

Both the arrested will be produced before a special CBI court in Patna and the probe agency will take them on remand for further interrogation. Kumar could be a key link in the question paper leak to ascertain the role of NTA officials, CBI officials said.

The federal agency has so far arrested 14 persons. One of the alleged kingpins, Rakesh Ranjan, was arrested from Nalanda on Thursday. Ranjan had allegedly obtained the leaked paper, solved it and then circulated it to the MBBS aspirants.

The CBI had claimed last month before a court that “a larger conspiracy exists involving interstate links in the NEET-UG examination related irregularities.” NEET-UG stands for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate).

Ever since the NEET-UG results were announced on June 4, protests swept across India as thousands of students hit the streets against this year’s process amid allegations of question paper leaks, inflated marking and arbitrary allowance of grace marks, even as opposition parties called for a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the allegations.

As many as 2.4 million students wrote the test on May 5 at 4,750 centres in 571 cities around the world.

Following an uproar, the Union education ministry asked the CBI to probe a larger conspiracy in the paper leak. So far, the federal agency has registered six cases in the matter.

Earlier, the CBI arrested a newspaper employee, Jamaluddin, Haque and Alam of Oasis School in Hazaribagh, as well as two other accused from Patna, Ashutosh Kumar and Manish Kumar.

It is alleged that in Bihar, aspirants who paid money to the so-called solver gang, allegedly run by 53-year-old Sanjeev Kumar, alias Luthan Mukhia, had used a school for preparing for the exam from the leaked paper.