The Delhi high court on Monday dismissed, with costs of ₹25,000, a petition filed by National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) paper leak accused Dhananjay Nivrutti Lokhande challenging his arrest and seeking immediate release on the ground that he was not supplied a copy of the arrest memo.
Lokhande, 25-year-old, was arrested on May 13 as an accused in relation to the alleged irregularities in the NEET-UG examination.
A bench of justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja termed the petition an abuse of process of law and meritless.
“We find the present petition to be an abuse of the process of law. This is absolutely meritless. Accordingly we dismiss the same with a cost of ₹25,000 to be submitted with the advocates welfare fund,” the court said in the order.
This was after Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special public prosecutor Premtosh Kumar Mishra submitted that the grounds of arrest were communicated to Lokhande after his arrest and that the information was also conveyed telephonically.
Lokhande approached the high court after the trial court, on August 22, rejected his plea seeking a copy of his arrest memo.
The trial court held that the arrest memo would fall within the category of unrelied documents, for which an accused is not entitled to a copy. It further observed that whether a copy of the arrest memo had been furnished to Lokhande was a matter to be determined during the trial.
{{/usCountry}}The trial court held that the arrest memo would fall within the category of unrelied documents, for which an accused is not entitled to a copy. It further observed that whether a copy of the arrest memo had been furnished to Lokhande was a matter to be determined during the trial.
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In his petition before the high court, Lokhande contended that his arrest was illegal in the absence of an arrest memo. He claimed that the only document in the entire chargesheet record relating to his arrest was a two-page “Personal Search Memo” dated May 13.
“There are no grounds of arrest, no reasons of arrest, no record of the date, time and place of arrest as such, no record of communication of the grounds to the Petitioner, no intimation to any relative or friend under section 48 BNSS [Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita], no declaration of rights, and no offer of medical examination. The memo that does exist records the Petitioner Dhananjay Nivrutti Lokhande as the son of “Madhukar Raghunath Khairar”, who is, per the chargesheet itself, the father of co-accused No. 9 Shubham Madhukar Khairnar; the column ‘By whom personal search conducted’ is blank,” the petition said.
NEET-UG examinations conducted on May 3 was cancelled by the National Testing Agency (NTA), due to a leak. A re-exam was ordered for June 21, triggering widespread outrage and panic among aspirants.
The CBI earlier this month filed its chargesheet against all 13 accused arrested in the case, stating that its investigation traced the alleged leak from the paper setters to beneficiary candidates and unearthed the alleged conspiracy.
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The three paper setters appointed by the NTA — Manisha Gurunath Mandhare for botany and zoology, Prahlad Vithalrao Kulkarni for chemistry, and Manisha Sanjay Havaldar for physics — have been named as accused in the case.
According to the CBI chargesheet, Kulkarni allegedly transcribed 135 chemistry questions, along with their answer options, onto small pieces of paper and carried them out of the confidential area. The agency alleged that Mandhare and Havaldar memorised questions and their parameters and subsequently reconstructed them with the help of textbooks.
The CBI invoked provisions relating to criminal conspiracy, cheating, criminal breach of trust and destruction of evidence, besides provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 2024.
The agency relied on 360 witnesses, 422 documents and 43 material objects in support of its case. All 13 accused named in the chargesheet are currently in judicial custody, while the CBI said that further investigation is underway.