NEET-UG Case: CBI Arrests Key Accused

• By Thetripurapost Desk, Delhi
• Jul 16, 2024
• 383

CBI has arrested 2 more people in the NEET paper leak case. The arrested accused have been identified as Pankaj Singh alias Raju. 

Pankaj Singh is accused of stealing NEET papers from Hazaribagh trunk, which were later leaked. Pankaj Singh has also done civil engineering. At the same time, Raju is accused of circulating the leaked paper i.e. distributing it.

The CBI team has arrested Pankaj Singh from Patna. Meanwhile, Raju, who helped him in the leak case, has been arrested from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand. 

Hazaribagh is being said to be the hub of the paper leak case. The NEET papers were kept in a trunk here. The CBI had earlier arrested the principal and vice principal of Hazaribagh's Oasis School. The CBI team arrested both of them and brought them to Patna.

CBI has already arrested 13 people in this case. Now two more people have been arrested by CBI. In this way, 15 people have been arrested in this case so far. After getting the remand of all 13 accused from Patna High Court on Friday, CBI also reached Beur Jail today. 

After interrogating some of the accused in the jail, the team took everyone to their office in Patna. Where, the team members interrogated all the accused one to one.

The NEET UG controversy

On May 5, the country's biggest entrance exam NEET UG was conducted in which about 24 lakh students participated.

Allegations of paper leak started coming up soon after the exam was conducted. On May 6, Patna police also registered an FIR in this case on the suspicion of paper leak. On the information of central agencies, Patna police also registered an FIR in this regard at Shastri Nagar police station.

The case of investigation into the paper leak was handed over to the Economic Offences Unit (EOU) of Bihar Police on Friday, May 10.

In the action, the EOU unit of Patna Police arrested 13 people including four examinees and their family members on May 11.

A PIL was filed in Patna High Court and the matter reached the court. In the petition, a plea was made to cancel the exam and get it investigated by CBI.
A petition was also filed in the Supreme Court over the paper leak allegations. A group of candidates moved the Supreme Court demanding a fresh NEET-UG 2024 exam.

The final answer key of NEET UG was released on June 4, and a few hours later, NTA surprised everyone by announcing the NEET UG result. As per the schedule released, the NEET UG result was to be released on June 14, but it was announced on June 4, 10 days before the scheduled date.

This year a record 67 candidates secured rank-1. Never before in the history of NEET has the number of toppers been so high. At the same time, some candidates were also given grace marks under the "Loss of Time" criteria.

After the results were declared, medical aspirants from across the country alleged irregularities in the marks. NTA denied any irregularities in the results.
The dispute gradually escalated and took a political turn.
Allegations of exam rigging started coming from all over the country and demands for a high level investigation into the matter and re-conducting of the exam started rising.

On June 08, NTA held a press conference to clarify all the questions and allegations being raised from across the country, but the matter did not calm down. The protests continued and the controversy took a monstrous form.

On June 11, a petition was heard in the Supreme Court seeking cancellation and re-conduct of NEET UG. The Supreme Court said that the sanctity of the examination has been affected, the court issued a notice to the National Testing Agency (NTA) and sought a reply. The vacation bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah refused to stop the counseling of the passed candidates for admission to MBBS, BDS and other courses. At the same time, it also refused to cancel the examination. 

On June 13, the Supreme Court once again heard the NEET exam controversy. During this, the Center told the apex court that the decision of the National Testing Agency (NTA) to give grace marks to 1,563 candidates of NEET-UG 2024 has been withdrawn. Such candidates will be given the option to take the exam again on June 23. Its results will come on June 30. During the hearing, the Supreme Court reiterated that it will not stop the counseling of NEET-UG 2024.

Meanwhile, the UGC NET exam conducted by NTA was cancelled just a day after it was conducted. The exam was held on 18 June.

Following this, the NEET PG exam conducted by CSIR and NBEMS conducted by NTA were also postponed.

NTA Director General Subodh Kumar Singh was removed.
The responsibility of investigating the case was handed over to the CBI.
The CBI registered the first FIR on June 23