The Bihar government issued a notification on Sunday evening, handing over the case relating to irregularities in NEET-UG to the CBI and allowing the central agency to take over the probe. A day after taking five more suspects, including one residing in Deoghar of Jharkhand, into custody, the Bihar Police's Economic Offences Unit increased the total number of detainees in the matter to 18.
The CBI earlier in the day registered an FIR pertaining to the alleged NEET "paper leak" based on a referral from the Union ministry of education, in view of the nationwide protest and student petitions.
The Bihar Home Department has issued a notice, allowing the CBI to probe into an FIR lodged on 5 June at Shastrinagar Police Station in Patna. The case relates to offences under sections 407, 408, 409, and 120B of the IPC regarding irregularities in the NEET UG 2024 test held on 5 May. The EOU will forward all fresh case records to the CBI, which is likely to start its inquiry in Patna shortly.
The EOU stated that the Deoghar arrests included Baldev Kumar, Mukesh Kumar, Panku Kumar, Rajeev Kumar, and Paramjeet Singh of Nalanda. It added that Baldev Kumar is linked to the Sanjeev Kumar alias Lutan Mukhiya interstate gang. He had downloaded the solved NEET-UG answer sheet a day ahead of the examination in PDF format on his mobile. The EOU statement nailed the involvement of the Mukhiya gang, notorious for the leaked answer sheet, behind a host of interstate paper leaks.
It was later found that Baldev and his aides had got the answer sheet printed and supplied to aspirants in a safe house at Ram Krishna Nagar, Patna, for memorization on May 4. The aspirants were aided by the previously arrested Nitish Kumar and Amit Anand.
Investigation by the EOU revealed that the Mukhiya gang had procured the leaked question paper of NEET-UG from a private school in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. The investigators matched a partially burnt question paper recovered from the Patna safe house with the reference question paper given by the National Testing Agency, which proved the source of the leak.
The EOU also investigating anomalies in question paper handling and transportation, according to NTA claims, were ignored by the accused in the leakage case. Everybody associated with the custody chain of question papers, right from bank officials to employees of a courier company, was quizzed.
Meanwhile, the hunt for Mukhiya and other gang members is on as three of the arrested—Rajeev Kumar, Panku Kumar and Paramjeet Singh—have been involved in arrangements of duplicate mobile SIMs, phones and accommodation to Baldev Kumar and his associates in Deoghar. A taxi driver, Mukesh Kumar, was arrested for arranging vehicles for the accused and aspirants in Patna.
The EOU said 15 aspirants identified by the NTA were under scanner, of which four have already been quizzed and the rest will be examined. A month ago, the EOU had arrested 13 persons in connection with the case.
The NTA held the NEET-UG examination on May 5, which involved around 24 lakh candidates. Their results declared on June 4 were again mired in allegations of paper leaks and irregularities in Bihar and other states. Union Education Ministry officials stoutly reiterated that the reported malpractices had been localized and therefore not fair to have the careers of candidates unfairly affected by those who may have legitimately passed the exam since its conduct demanded no cancellation.
Conducted by the NTA, NEET-UG is held for admission to courses in MBBS, BDS, AYUSH, and other related courses of Govt. as well as private institutions across the country.
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