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| Photo Credit: PTI
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday filed its first chargesheet against 13 accused persons in connection with the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate) 2024 paper leak case of Patna in Bihar. The probe agency has so far arrested 40 persons, including several medical students, for their alleged involvement in the racket.
Also Read: NEET UG 2024: Supreme Court says, didnโt cancel examination as there was no systematic breach
They have been identified by the agency as Nitish Kumar, Amit Anand, Sikander Yadvendu, Ashutosh Kumar-1, Roshan Kumar, Manish Prakash, Ashutosh Kumar-2, Akhilesh Kumar, Avdesh Kumar, Anurag Yadav, Abhishek Kumar, Shivnandan Kumar, and Ayush Raj. The chargesheet has been submitted before a special court in Patna.
The agency has invoked Sections 120B, 201, 409, 380, 411, 420, and 109 of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code (IPC) and substantive offences thereof against them. The case was initially registered at Shastri Nagar police station in Patna on May 5, and later transferred to the CBI on June 23.
โThe CBI has utilised advanced forensic techniques, Artificial Intelligence technology, CCTV footages, mobile tower location analysis, etc. to gather evidence against the accused,โ said the agency. Of the 40 persons arrested in the case so far, 15 were earlier held by the Bihar police. The CBI has conducted searches at 58 locations till now. Some of the accused accused are currently in the agencyโs custody.
โAs and when further investigation against these accused/ suspects is complete, supplementary chargesheet(s) will be filed,โ it said.
Through a statement, the agency had earlier said: โInvestigation has revealed that NEET (UG) – 2024 question paper was illicitly accessed from Oasis School, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, on May 5, 2024, in the morning by one Pankaj Kumar alias Aditya alias Sahil, who is one of the masterminds of the NEET paper leak case, in connivance with the Hazaribagh NTA (National Testing Agency) city coordinator-cum-principal of Oasis School, the centre superintendent-cum-vice principal of Oasis School, and another associate from Hazaribagh.โ
It said that some recovered pieces of half-burnt question papers enabled the agency to reach the designated NEET examination centre from where it was stolen.
โThe trunks containing the NEET UG 2024 question papers were brought to the school and kept in the control room on the morning of May 5, 2024. Minutes after the trunks arrived, the principal and vice principal unauthorisedly and illegally allowed access to the room where the trunks were kept, to the mastermind. The sophisticated tools used to open the trunk and access the question papers…have been seized,โ the CBI had said.
The question paper was solved in Hazaribagh through a group of medical students and the solved paper was shared with certain students who paid money to the accused.
While the investigations are under way, the agency is still piecing together all the details related to the syndicate and its key masterminds. Some more arrests in the case are likely.
