NEET-UG 2024 paper leak: CBI detains four students from AIIMS Patna ahead of Supreme Court hearing

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has detained four students from AIIMS Patna in connection with the paper leak and irregularities in the entrance examination. The students are from the 2021 batch, and they have been taken into custody for questioning. The investigating agency has sealed the rooms of the students, and their laptops and mobile phones have also been seized.

Dr Gopal Krushna Pal, AIIMS Patna Executive Director & CEO said, "No doctor has been arrested, but as per the information available, CBI team has taken away 4 students...One of these students was not at the hostel, he himself reported to them later. So, going by the information we have received, a total of 4 students are with the CBI."

"We have cooperated regarding all the help they needed. We will continue to cooperate. The students haven't returned yet. We don't know about the involvement of students, or how they got involved, or whether they are guilty...The students are Chandan Singh, Rahul Anand, Karan Jain and Kumar Sanu. Chandan Singh is a resident of Siwan (Bihar), Kumar Sanu is r/o Patna (Bihar), Rahul Anand is actually from Dhanbad (Jharkhand) but now lives in Patna and Karaa Jain is from Araria (Bihar)...Yesterday, CBI told us to seal their rooms. CBI has sealed 3 rooms and we sealed 1 room," Dr Pal told ANI.

Notably, the development comes ahead of the Supreme Court hearing scheduled today (July 18) on a batch of petitions in the NEET-UG 2024 controversy.

The cause list of the Supreme Court shows that a bench comprising Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra would hear more than 40 pleas, including those filed by the National Testing Agency (NTA) seeking transfer of cases pending against it in various high courts on the NEET-UG row to the Supreme Court to avoid multiplicity of litigations, news agency PTI reported.

The detention of the doctors comes a day after the CBI arrested Pankaj Kumar, who is alleged to have stolen the NEET-UG paper from the trunk of the NTA in Bihar’s Hazaribagh before they were allegedly leaked and his associate Raju Singh. Kumar was picked up from Patna in Bihar while Singh was arrested from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand.

A special court in Patna on Wednesday sent Pankaj Kumar to 14-day CBI custody, while Raju was remanded to 10-day custody, officials said. CBI has arrested nine people in the NEET paper leak case. It also has the custody of 13 other accused, including Rocky alias Rakesh Ranjan, the kingpin in the case, from Bihar.

CBI had earlier zeroed in on Hazaribagh as the origin of the NEET-UG paper leak. In its probe the agency has found that the paper was leaked by Oasis school in Hazaribagh. Two sets of papers, which reached the school had their seals broken and instead of flagging the issue the staff remained tight-lipped, CBI found.

The Centre in an affidavit filed last week before the Supreme Court asserted the integrity of the NEET-UG 2024 exam process, highlighting key findings from the IIT-Madras data analysis. It stated that the IIT Madras report revealed no indications of mass malpractice or any localised set of candidates benefiting unduly. It added that the distribution of high marks was consistent across centres.

The NTA had also filed a separate affidavit in which it claimed that it had conducted an analysis of the distribution of marks, which indicates that the distribution of marks is quite normal and that there seems to be no extraneous factor that would influence it.