NEET-UG paper leak: CBI arrests five including four MBBS students of AIIMS Patna
PATNA, JULY 18 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday arrested five people, including four MBBS students of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)-Patna, in connection with the NEET-UG question paper leak case. The AIIMS-Patna students have been accused of helping the notorious ‘solver gang’ of Nalanda solve the leaked question papers.
The fifth person arrested in the case has been identified as Surendra Kumar who revealed to the interrogators that the AIIMS-Patna students were taken to a hotel in Patna to solve the leaked question papers ahead of the examination held on May 5.
Earlier, all the five persons identified as Chandan Singh, Kumar Shanu, Karan Jain and Rahul Anand, all students of AIIMS-Patna, and Surendra Kumar were produced before judicial magistrate first class Dhananjay Pandey. Later the court granted four-day remand of the five for further questioning at the request of the CBI.
While three of the students are from the 2021 batch, the fourth is from the 2022 batch. Three of them, including Chandan Singh (Siwan), Kumar Shanu (Patna), Karan Jain (Araria) are from Bihar, while the fourth student, Rahul Anand, is a native of Dhanbad in Jharkhand but lives in Patna. The AIIMS-Patna authorities confirmed the detention of the four students by the CBI.
Executive director-cum-CEO of AIIMS-Patna Dr. Gopal Krushna Pal said, “The CBI officials visited the campus on July 17 around 3 pm and took one student with them. Later they took two more students for questioning in NEET-UG paper leak case. The fourth student, who was not present in the hostel during their visit reported to them later.”
The director said that the CBI officials were in touch with him and had provided him photographs and other details of the students in question. “We are cooperating with the CBI officials in the probe and will continue to do so in future as well. But we are not aware whether the students concerned are guilty or what role they had played in the NEET paper leak case,” he told the media.
The AIIMS-Patna students were stated to be in touch with the ‘solver gang’ of Nalanda allegedly responsible for the NEET-UG paper leak scandal.
Representational image of students protesting demanding a retest for the NEET UG exam.
SC directs NTA to publish centre-wise results of NEET-UG by Saturday noon
Sources said that the AIIMS students had helped the members of the ‘solver gang’ led by Sanjeev Kumar Singh alias Lutan Mukhiya of Nalanda solve the questions obtained from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand.
The development came barely two days after the arrest of two key accused — Pankaj Kumar alias Aditya and Raju Singh from Patna and Hazaribagh (Jharkhand) respectively.
Pankaj Kumar, a resident of Bokaro in Jharkhand, was arrested from Patna on charges of stealing the question paper from the NTA (national testing agency) trunk in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh ahead of the examination held on May 5. Pankaj alias Aditya is a 2017-batch civil engineer from National Institute of Technology (NIT), Jamshedpur (Jharkhand).
The second accused identified as Raju Singh was arrested from a guest house located at Hazaribagh’s Ramnagar locality under Katkamdag police station. He has been charged with helping Pankaj in the leak of question paper.
Raju Singh is the fourth person arrested from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand in the paper leak case. Sources said that Pankaj is a civil engineer who stole the question paper and provided it to Chintu, a close aide of Sanjeev Mukhiya, stated to be kingpin of the ‘solver gang’.
Last Thursday, the CBI had arrested one of the key accused Rakesh Ranjan alias Rocky, a native of Nalanda district in Bihar. Rocky has been accused of arranging solvers from Patna and Ranchi for the gang. He is stated to be a trusted member of the gang led by Sanjeev Kumar Singh alias Lutan Mukhiya alias Sanjeev Mukhiya.
Before Rocky’s arrest, the CBI had conducted raids at his Nalanda residence but could not find him. Last Friday, the Patna high court granted them custody of 13 accused persons who were arrested earlier by Patna police before the case was handed over to the central probe agency.
Till date, the CBI has arrested 42 persons from seven states in connection with the paper leak case.
Meanwhile, the probe agency has stepped up its operation to nab the medical students and doctors of government medical colleges of Bihar and Jharkhand who were allegedly ‘hired’ by Sanjeev Mukhiya to solve the leaked questions.
-PTI
