In the early hours of Friday, a midnight operation in an apartment in Patna’s Danapur ended an 11-month manhunt for a 51-year-old Nalanda resident, who carried a Rs 3 lakh bounty and faces charges in at least four examination scams across multiple states. A joint team of personnel from the Special Operations Group (SOG) of Bihar’s Economic Offences Unit (EOU) and Patna’s Special Task Force raided an apartment near Saguna More, arresting Sanjeev Mukhiya, the alleged mastermind behind the undergraduate medical entrance exam, NEET-UG 2024. A special court on Saturday remanded Mukhiya to Bihar EOU for 36 hours. Authorities had reportedly sought five days of remand. After the 36-hour custody ends, the EOU may seek an extension, if required, officials said. “He was constantly on the move, slipping between states and borders, from Uttar Pradesh to Nepal,” Nayyar Hasnain Khan, Additional Director General of the EOU told The Indian Express. “Several police units were tracking him for a long time,” the officer said. “Yesterday (Thursday), inputs placed him near Saguna More and Danapur police station.” Following the tip-off, EOU teams tracked movements in the area and narrowed down the apartment building. The officer said, “After verifying his presence in a specific building, we coordinated with Patna’s Senior Superintendent of Police, and with Danapur police’s support, Sanjeev Mukhiya was arrested during a raid between 1 and 1.30 am.” Initial findings suggested that Mukhiya was “visiting a woman renter” in the apartment, ADG Khan said. “We’re investigating her identity, connection, and any case involvement.” Mukhiya was interrogated by the EOU and CBI on Friday. ‘Exploited every layer of exam system’ Mukhiya, a former technical assistant at Udyan Vidyalaya in Nalanda’s Noorsarai, allegedly orchestrated what the EOU calls an “organised and professional” interstate solver gang. “He exploited every layer of the examination system,” Khan said, detailing how Mukhiya allegedly executed the NEET-UG leak. “He identified desperate parents with funds to secure their children’s futures, and charged anywhere between Rs 8-15 lakh per candidate, even higher in some cases,” the officer said. Mukhiya allegedly manipulated vulnerabilities at every stage of the exam machinery, the ADG said, from printing presses to transportation to centres. “In Hazaribagh, he arranged for question paper photos to be extracted with coordination from insiders.” Mukhiya then allegedly “summoned candidates to guest houses, locked them in overnight, and told them to memorise answers,” the ADG revealed. “No physical copies were given to avoid traces.” The next morning, candidates were allegedly “dropped at exam centres”, armed with illicit knowledge. Scam unravels The scam was unravelled on May 5, 2024, when Patna police detected irregularities during the NEET-UG exam. On June 23, 2024, the case was transferred to the CBI, which named Mukhiya as the “kingpin”. The case mentioned eight accused, including Mukhiya, middlemen Nitish Kumar and Amit Anand from Munger, and Sikandar Yadavendu, a junior engineer. The gang’s reach extended beyond NEET, with involvement in leaks for Bihar’s Teacher Recruitment Exam (TRE-3) in March 2024 to the Uttar Pradesh Constable Recruitment Exam, and recruitment tests for veterinary doctors and English teachers in Haryana, officials alleged. According to ADG Khan, this isn’t Mukhiya’s first brush with the law. In 2010, he was linked to exam cheating using Bluetooth devices in Bihar. In 2016, Uttarakhand Police arrested him for a constable recruitment exam leak, and around the same period, Bihar Police detained him for a block-level exam scam targeting SC/ST candidates. “Despite jail time, he resumed his illicit trade. He found loopholes in the system and figured out how to exploit them,” Khan noted. The EOU had earlier arrested five members of Mukhiya’s gang — Paramjit Singh, Baldev Kumar, Prashant Kumar, Ajit Kumar, and Rajiv Kumar — in Jharkhand’s Deoghar, on June 21, 2024. Baldev allegedly received a PDF of the leaked NEET-UG paper on May 5, 2024. Patna police also nabbed 13 others, including students, parents, and middlemen. According to police, the gang operated across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, and beyond, with Mukhiya allegedly paying salaries and providing two-wheelers to aides. A disproportionate assets case was filed against him on October 23, 2024, after raids on four of his properties uncovered property documents, vehicles, bank deposits, and gold and silver jewellery far exceeding his known income as a technical assistant. Origins of a paper leak ‘kingpin’ Mukhiya’s criminal roots trace back to the 1990s, when he worked under Ranjeet Don, a notorious paper leak figure from Hilsa, Nalanda. Don, who allegedly “purchased” an MBBS degree from Darbhanga Medical College and was arrested in 2003 for leaking the Common Admission Test (CAT) papers, mentored Mukhiya before he built his own network. Mukhiya’s son, Dr Shiv Kumar, an MBBS graduate from Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH), was arrested in 2024 for the TRE-3 leak. His wife, Mamata Devi, served as mukhiya of Bhutaha Khar Panchayat from 2016 to 2021. This was what got Sanjeev the moniker, ‘Mukhiya’. A former Janata Dal (United) member, Mamata Devi contested the 2020 Bihar Assembly election from Harnaut on a Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) ticket, losing to JD(U)’s Hari Narayan Singh.
