New Delhi: The CBI filed its fifth supplementary chargesheet in the NEET UG examination paper leak case on Friday against five persons, including key gang member Amit Kumar Singh of Bokaro who allegedly orchestrated and executed the leak, officials said.
In the chargesheet filed before the special CBI court in Patna, the agency alleged that Singh was the key planner of the gang and was aided by Sudip Kumar and Yuvraj Kumar of Bokaro, Abhimanyu Patel of Nalanda and Amit Kumar of Patna in the distribution of the leaked papers to aspirants in Bihar and Jharkhand, they said.
"With this, the total chargesheeted accused in this case stands at 45, and all of them are still in judicial custody," a CBI spokesperson said in a statement.
The spokesperson said the chargesheet has been filed under various sections of the Indian Penal Code such as 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 109 (abetment), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 380 (theft), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) and under section 13(2) read with section 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (as amended in 2018).
The CBI took over the investigation on June 23. "Names of the candidates who are beneficiaries of the paper theft or unfair means and names of the MBBS student who had solved the stolen paper or who had appeared in the exam as impersonators have already been identified and shared with NTA/Ministry of Education," the statement said.
The NEET-UG is conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) for admissions to MBBS, BDS, AYUSH and other related courses in government and private institutions. This year, the exam was conducted on May 5 at 4,750 centres in 571 cities, including 14 abroad. More than 23 lakh candidates appeared for the test.
The Bihar Police launched a crackdown after getting inputs of an alleged leak of the paper and it soon snowballed into a major political issue. The Union education ministry handed over the probe to the CBI, which had registered several FIRs in the case, taking over probes from different states including Bihar.
According to the CBI, the paper was stolen from Oasis School in Hazaribagh by one Pankaj Kumar in connivance with its principal Ahsanul Haque and vice-principal Mohd Imtiyaz Alam using sophisticated tools. Trunks containing NEET UG 2024 question papers were brought to the school and kept in the control room on the morning of May 5.
Haque and Alam illegally allowed Kumar access to the room where the trunks were kept, the CBI has alleged. Using sophisticated tools, Kumar allegedly opened the trunks to access the question papers, it said. According to the CBI, the paper was solved in Hazaribagh on the morning of the examination on May 5 by a set of solvers studying MBBS courses at AIIMS Patna, RIMS Ranchi and a medical college in Bharatpur.
The agency has arrested seven alleged solvers and seized the equipment used to open the trunk. "The solved paper was shared with certain selected students who paid money to the accused. All the solvers, who are MBBS students from reputed colleges, have been identified and most of them arrested. These solvers were specially brought to Hazaribagh as part of the conspiracy," the CBI spokesperson said earlier.
