Four MBBS students from AIIMS Patna detained by CBI in NEET ‘paper leak’ case

Police sources said the four MBBS students were suspected of having been engaged by the alleged paper leak kingpin Sanjeev Mukhiya’s gang to solve the leaked papers.

“After the PDF of the leaked question paper was sent from a Hazaribagh centre to a member of Mukhiya’s solver gang, these students may have been hired for solving the paper before students were made to memorise the answers at a Khemnichak play school on the outskirts of Patna on intervening night of May 4 and May 5,” a source said. The NEET-UG exam took place on May 5.

The CBI has seized the mobile phones and laptops of all four students and also sealed their hostel rooms.

The source also said that the solver gang was likely to have engaged these students as they were studying in a premier institution like AIIMS.

Three of the four students under detention are third-years while one is a second-year student.

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The students were taken away from their hostel rooms on Wednesday in the presence of senior AIIMS faculty members who were informed in advance that the students needed for the probe, PTI quoted officials as saying.

The move comes two days after the CBI arrested Pankaj Kumar alias Aditya, a 2017-batch civil engineer from the National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur, who allegedly stole the NEET-UG paper from the NTA trunk in Hazaribagh.

Kumar, a resident of Bokaro, was arrested from Patna, officials had said.

The CBI had also arrested one Raju Singh who allegedly helped Kumar in stealing the paper, they said, adding that Singh was arrested from Hazaribagh.

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The CBI, which is probing the alleged irregularities in the medical entrance exam, has lodged six FIRs. The FIR from Bihar pertains to the alleged paper leak while the remaining ones from Gujarat, Rajasthan and Maharashtra are regarding impersonation of candidates and cheating.

The agency’s own FIR on a reference from the Union Education Ministry pertains to a “comprehensive investigation” into the alleged irregularities in the NEET-UG 2024.

The CBI had taken over the case from the Economic Offence Unit (EOU) of the Bihar Police last month.

NEET-UG is conducted by the National Testing Agency for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions.

With PTI