New Delhi: It may not be just the NEET-UG 2026 question paper that was leaked. Questions are being raised now about a similar leak in 2025 when five members of Rajasthan’s Biwal family got through in their first attempt.
This was discovered by investigators when they started following a trail arising from the arrests of two brothers—Mangilal and Dinesh Biwal—from Jaipur’s Jamwa Ramgarh. Dinesh procured the 2026 NEET questions for his son, who had scored 43 percent in Class 10 and barely crossed 50 percent in Class 12, not marks that would inspire confidence for a career in medicine.
In 2026, there were three candidates for NEET-UG from the Biwal family in the rural pocket of Jaipur city. Apart from Dinesh’s son, two others from the family were also appearing in the highly competitive entrance examination. Now both the brothers’ sons are missing, while their fathers, Dinesh Biwal and Mangilal Biwal, have been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The brothers were taken into custody and questioned first by the Rajasthan Special Operations Group (SOG) in Jaipur, and then handed over to the CBI. The CBI team had received inputs that about 100 of the actual questions were part of a ‘guess paper’ containing 500-600 questions, circulating on WhatsApp.
The Bilwals’ lawyer Advocate A. P. Singh said the entire case “reeks of conspiracy and unverified complaints”.
“Since their kids qualified in one go, the neighbours developed jealousy of the family. That was the reason why neighbours complained to the police and got them arrested,” Singh told ThePrint.
“This is an interesting case where all male members of the family have been made accused in the same case,” he further said.
The central agency says it has now identified the main “source” of the leak, who compromised the sanctity of the examination process conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA). The agency has arrested Professor P. V. Kulkarni, who was part of the NTA committee that set the question paper, and who had allegedly leaked it for a huge sum of money.
Also read: ThePrint Exclusive: CBI traces NEET paper leak to prof who was part of NTA panel that set paper
From Jaipur to Sikar, Mumbai, and Varanasi
The CBI has found that the professor had an associate (also now arrested) in Pune, who allegedly helped sell the question papers before the scheduled date of the 2026 examination.
The Biwal family’s role is still being investigated. According to the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that the SOG initially identified, and later the CBI, the Biwal family had five candidates for the NEET-UG 2025 examination and all of them cleared it.
According to investigators who verified the family’s history, three sisters have been studying at medical colleges in Jaipur, Mumbai and Varanasi, respectively. Among them, one was taking the NEET examination again this year, according to the CBI probe.
Two more of Mangilal’s children have also started their MBBS studies in Sawai Madhopur and Dausa. Sources in the agency said that multiple teams of the central agency have collected evidence from these medical institutes about the candidatures of these students from Biwal.
According to the CBI’s investigation so far, Mangilal’s son, who cleared the exam last year, was the connecting link between his family and the syndicate that had illegal access to the NEET 2026 question paper.
“During his interrogation by CBI sleuths, Mangilal’s son revealed that he came into contact with Yash Yadav (another accused in Gurugram) during coaching at Sikar and that he had claimed that he could leak the NEET UG 2026 question paper for money,” the CBI alleged while seeking remand of Mangilal, his son and Dinesh Biwal Thursday.
Sources privy to the preliminary probe conducted by the Rajasthan SOG suggest that the family’s history has cast doubts on the sanctity of last year’s NEET examination. “It’s too much of a coincidence that all five children of the same household attempt the highly competitive examination, and all of them succeed in one go,” an officer said.
However, the ambit of the CBI’s probe as of now is limited to the compromise in the sanctity of the examination held earlier this year.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: NEET leak traced to ‘insider’ as CBI finds Pune counsellor got paper from ‘source’ within NTA