New Delhi: A man allegedly involved in the paper leak of the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC), medical aspirants who purchased leaked question papers for lakhs and their parents are among those chargesheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the high-profile NEET case.
In total 13 people, including the key figure Nitish Kumar, were named in the chargesheet. All these accused were arrested by the Bihar Police on 5 May.
According to a source in the CBI, Kumar played a key role in executing the paper leak, while the rest of the accused include his gang members, candidates who appeared in the NEET exam and their fathers.
Kumar, another CBI source said, was also involved in the BPSC paper leak as well as had been working with different gangs on a case-to-case basis for procuring question papers.
“Nitish Kumar executed the paper leak from Patna. He received the papers in Patna and sold it to the candidates for Rs 20-Rs 25 lakh. He was working with the gang of an individual named Rocky,” the source said. “The rest named in the chargesheet are his associates, students who bought the paper and their parents.”
Among the other chargesheeted, Akhilesh Kumar and Avdesh Kumar are fathers of candidates who purchased the papers, while Anurag Yadav, Abhishek Kumar, Shivnandan Kumar and Ayush Raj are candidates who sat for the exam after seeing the leaked paper.
Amit Anand, Sikander Yadvendu, Roshan Kumar, Manish Prakash and two other accused with the same name of Ashutosh Kumar assisted Nitish Kumar in the operation, the source confirmed.
The accused were charged under Sections 420 (cheating), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) 201 (disappearance of evidence), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 380 (theft in dwelling house), 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property) and 109 (offence committed in consequence of abetment) of the Indian Penal Code.
As many as 58 locations were searched as part of the CBI probe in the case while 25 people were arrested, so far. Additionally, the federal agency has taken over the custody of 15 other accused from the Economic Offence Unit (EOU) of the Bihar Police.
The CBI took over the case on 23 June after the Bihar government gave nod to the Ministry of Education’s request to hand over the case related to the irregularities in the NEET UG 2024 exam from the EOU.
A CBI spokesperson said that the investigation is ongoing against the remaining accused, including those arrested for being part of the leak of question paper from Oasis School in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh. Similarly, a group of doctors — who were allegedly part of the solver gang — will be named in the supplementary chargesheet.
ThePrint had earlier reported that the Patna Police had arrested Sikander Yadvendu (56), Akhilesh Kumar (43), and Bittu Kumar (38) in a SUV on the day of NEET examination (5 May). Their arrests had led the investigators to Nitish Kumar and Amit Anand who were allegedly involved in “setting” of examinees in their contact.
The police had also seized the NEET admit cards of Abhishek Kumar, Shivnandan Kumar, Anurag Yadav and Ayush Raj from the SUV. Ayush’s father Akhilesh Kumar had led the police to his son at an exam centre in Patna.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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