The Bihar police registered a First Information Report against eight accused on 5 May for their alleged role in the leaking and distributing question paper of the medical entrance exam NEET-UG.
As per the details of the FIR- accessed by the Daily Guardian- that was filed by Inspector Amar Kumar, Station House Officer (SHO) of the Shastri Nagar police station, Patna, the accused Nitish, Rocky, Akhilesh Kumar, Sikandar Yadav, Ayush Raj, Sanjeev Singh, Bittu Kumr and Amit and other unknown individuals that he got information around 2.15 PM in the afternoon on 5 May that the integrity of ‘chain of custody’ of the question paper of the NEET had been broken by a gang comprising students and those running coaching institutes.
In course of its further action, the police team first arrested three individuals who were traveling in a white colour Renault Duster car bearing Jharkhand registration- JH01 BW0019.
The police arrested three individuals from the said vehicle- Sikandar Yadav (56), Akhilesh Kumar (43) and Bittu Kumar (38). The police also recovered four admit cards of different individuals. On the interrogation of these three individuals, one more accused Ayush Raj was detailed by the police from an exam centre in Patna at 4.10 PM who during interrogation told the police that the question papers were given to him and 25 others on the night of 4 May at Learns Boys hostel and Learns Play School, Patna.
After this, more persons in this whole racket were arrested.
The NEET exam was conducted between phase II and phase III of the general elections and leads to questions about how the tight security measures especially on the border between two states failed to detect such a massive scale of movement of illegal money that was paid to those involved in the scam and residents of different states to Bihar.
On Thursday, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan had claimed that there was no paper leak in NEET while accusing the opposition of spreading lies without knowing facts. The results of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate (NEET-UG) were announced by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on June 4.
Pradhan’s statement indicates that he was either not informed of the Patna police registering an FIR after finding the NEET paper was leaked more than one month ago or he chose not to mention it despite being aware of it.
More than 24 lakh candidates had appeared for the NEET exams. So far the Bihar police has arrested 19 people in this case including 14 from Patna, 4 from Purnia and one from Gopalganj. Those arrested included dummy candidates who had come from different states including Rajasthan.
The arrested includes one female candidate who was appearing for a Maharastra based candidate. The dummy students were to be given Rs 5 lakh for appearing in the exam in place of the original candidate.
Sources said that the initial input in this was developed by the Jharkhand Special Task Force. Now the case is being investigated by the Economic Offence Unit of Bihar police.
