New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Saturday filed its third charge sheet in the National Entrance cum Eligibility Test (Undergraduate) or NEET-UG paper leak case against 21 individuals, taking the list of accused chargesheeted to 40, ThePrint has learnt.
Sources in the agency told ThePrint that the latest charge sheet filed before the special court for CBI cases in Patna is a “major” document that explains in detail the sequence of events and roles played by key accused.
Pankaj Kumar, who allegedly stole the question paper from a trunk of the National Testing Agency (NTA) in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh, has been identified as one of the kingpins. Hailing from Bokaro and having studied civil engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur, Pankaj was nabbed by agency sleuths in Patna on 16 July this year.
“He was the one who stole a question from the trunk of the National Testing Agency in Hazaribagh and was instrumental in leaking the paper,” an agency source told ThePrint.
The central agency had taken over the probe from Bihar Police’s Economic Offences Unit on the recommendation of the education ministry after complaints of widespread compromise in the 5 May exam at 4,750 centres across 571 cities, surfaced. So far, the probe agency has arrested 48 individuals in this case and with the latest charge sheet, the total number of accused charged has reached 40.
The document was filed before the Patna special court early a fortnight after the agency had filed separate charge sheets against six accused.
Apart from the case with the Bihar EOU, the CBI also took over cases lodged in Rajasthan and Gujarat and probed large-scale malpractices in the conduction of examination.
In the last charge sheet, the agency had named Baldev Kumar alias Chintu, a close aide of alleged mastermind Sanjeev Mukhiya—who had allegedly received the solved NEET question paper in PDF format on his phone for distribution to candidates involved in their plan—and a candidate named Sunny Kumar, who hails from Mukhiya’s home district Nalanda.
Additionally, the CBI had also named Dr Ahsanul Haque, the principal of Hazaribagh’s Oasis School and NTA’s coordinator in the city, Mohammed Imtiyaz Alam, the vice-principal of the school and superintendent at the NTA centre in Oasis School, a journalist named Jamaluddin, who allegedly aided the duo in leaking the question paper, and a co-conspirator, Aman Kumar Singh.
These accused were charged under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), section 109 (abetment), section 409 (criminal breach of trust), section 420 (cheating), section 380 (theft), section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), and section 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) of the Indian Penal Code in the second charge sheet.
Earlier, the CBI had on 1 August charged 13 individuals, mostly including accused who were under the custody of the Bihar Police EOU before the federal probe agency stepped in. These 13 included aides of Sanjeev Mukhiya who were involved in the transportation of candidates from the play school in the outskirts of Patna to the NEET examination centre in the city, along with the candidates and their parents who were allegedly part of the conspiracy.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)