An agitator holds a placard during a protest of the India Youth Front, an umbrella group representing I.N.D.I.A bloc parties' youth wings, over the alleged irregularities in NEET 2024 results, at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi in July, 2024.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a third charge sheet in connection with the alleged leak of the NEET-UG exam paper, officials said on Saturday.
In the charge sheet submitted to a special CBI court in Patna, the CBI has named 21 individuals as accused.
The agency has alleged that trunks containing NEET-UG 2024 question papers were delivered to the Oasis School in Hazaribagh and stored in a control room on the morning of May 5.
Shortly after the trunks' arrival, Principal Ahsanul Haque and Vice Principal Imtiaz Alam permitted Pankaj Kumar, the mastermind, to access the control room where the trunks were kept, the CBI has alleged.
Haque and Alam have already been charge-sheeted in the case.
Kumar, a civil engineer from the 2017 batch of the National Institute of Technology in Jamshedpur, used sophisticated tools to open the trunks and access the question papers, the probe agency said.
The CBI has seized these tools along with CCTV footage from the room.
On the morning of the examination, a group of seven MBBS students from AIIMS Patna, RIMS Ranchi, and a medical college in Bharatpur solved the paper at Hazaribagh. The agency has since arrested these alleged solvers.
"The solved paper was shared with select students who paid money to the accused. Most of the solvers have been identified and arrested. They were specifically brought to Hazaribagh as part of the conspiracy," a CBI spokesperson had stated.
The investigation has also identified other members of the gang who assisted Kumar, with several arrests made.
"This group was supported by individuals who provided accommodation for the candidates, while others facilitated their transportation. Efforts are ongoing to trace the candidates who accessed the solved question paper, and necessary actions are being taken," the CBI had said in a statement.