E-Paper
Nashik medical sciences student detained in NEET paper leak case: Police
A senior SOG official said the ‘guess’ paper leaked from a printing press in Nashik, and was used in Haryana or Rajasthan
A student from Maharashtra’s Nashik who allegedly obtained a physical copy of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG) ‘guess’ paper was detained on Tuesday by Maharashtra police.
The student identified as Shubham Khairnar was a bachelor of medical sciences student in Bhopal who got the ‘guess’ paper’s physical copy in Nashik a few days before the NEET exam on May 3. He forwarded a soft copy to a person in Haryana. No first information report (FIR) has been lodged yet, a senior Rajasthan police officer aware of the investigation by the special operation group (SOG) said.
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“He accessed to the physical copy through some people who probably leaked the main question paper. They prepared a ‘guess’ paper and shared it with him, who circulated it further. He is a key person for us who will lead the further investigation. It is yet not clear how he came in touch with that network and how much he spent to buy the paper,” a senior officer from Maharashtra police said.
“After receiving the paper, he made a PDF and forwarded to someone in Haryana’s Gurugram. The soft copy was widely circulated in Rajasthan’s Jaipur, Sikar, then Kerala, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Dehradun etc,” he said.
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Khairnar interrogation will reveal the source of the physical paper, the officer said. A senior Rajasthan SOG officer said the ‘guess’ paper leaked from a printing press in Nashik, and was used in Haryana or Rajasthan. “We believe that the paper had been leaked from a printing press in Nashik. It could be a well-organised nation-wide network having paper solvers to impersonators,” he said.
The officer said the hand written ‘guess’ paper matched 120 of the 150 questions for biology and chemistry from the original paper. The same was sold to employees in paying guest hostels for NEET students and coaching centres. The guess paper contained 410 questions with answers.
“Two official teams of CBI from Delhi are likely to visit Rajasthan in the evening. So far, we have questioned 24 people across the country- many of whom including the Sikar-based counsellor were also brought to Jaipur headquarter of SOG,” the officer said.
The Rajasthan police questioned a Sikar coaching centre counsellor, who allegedly paid ₹5 lakh to buy the guess paper and sold it to NEET aspirants through WhatsApp.
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To be sure, the enforcement directorate (ED) in 2023 had conducted a raid at an accountant’s office in a prominent coaching centre in Sikar in connection to the paper leak in Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET), 2021. The SOG officials said the academy is still under their lens in this case.
On Monday, the SOG handed over the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
A senior SOG official said their investigation revealed a network of at least 45 persons spread across Maharashtra, Kerala, Haryana, Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, who provided the ‘guess’ paper to NEET aspirants.
“When we started the investigation, we found a WhatsApp group ‘Private Mafia’ where the paper was widely circulated. However it is limited to some paid members. This payment ranged over ₹5,000 to ₹30,000. Many people bought the ‘guess’ paper from this group while many also forwarded it to several others for free. We are trying to gather data on how many people accessed to the guess paper,” he said.
The SOG launched the probe after it found that at least 120 questions in the NEET paper held on May 3 were same as in a ‘guess’ paper circulated on WhatAapp groups.
The SOG officers said that someone had access to the actual question paper on basis of which the model question paper was prepared.
The team is probing the involvement of the major paper-leak gangs of the state in the matter. “Earlier, many coaching centres even from Sikar have also been found involved in several recruitment examinations. Necessary action will be taken if any if them found being involved,” the officer added.
Sikar coordinator of the National Testing Agency (NTA), Narsi Ram on Sunday said that some students complained to the police about the ‘guess’ paper after the examination was conducted ‘peacefully’ in the coaching hub of the state. About 30,000 students appeared for the exam there.
