NEET-UG paper leak case: CBI arrests ‘mastermind’, two MBBS students who acted as ‘solvers’

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probing the alleged irregularities and question paper leak of the NEET-UG examination, arrested one of the masterminds and two other medical students who allegedly acted as “solvers”.

With the fresh arrests, the total number of persons taken into custody by the central agency rose to 21.

According to officials, Sashikant Paswan alias Sashi alias Pasu, one of the alleged masterminds, is a B.Tech (Electrical) passout from the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur. He was acting in tandem with Kumar and Rockey, who was also arrested earlier. 

The medical students, who were arrested on Saturday, are from a medical school in Bharatpur, Rajasthan.

“Second-year MBBS student Kumar Mangalam Bishnoi and first-year student Deepender Sharma were present in Hazaribagh on May 5, the date of NEET UG examination, and were allegedly acting as "solvers" for the paper stolen by Pankaj Kumar, an engineer, who was arrested earlier,” an officer was quoted as saying by PTI.

The investigators claimed that Pankaj Kumar, a 2017-batch civil engineer from the National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), allegedly stole the NEET-UG paper from the NTA trunk in Hazaribagh.

The CBI had on Friday arrested an MBBS student, Surabhi Kumari of Ranchi's Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), with the same charges. She was taken into custody after two days of detailed questioning by the agency.

On Thursday, the CBI had arrested four MBBS students of AIIMS Patna, all members of the solver module, in connection with the paper leak case. They have been sent to CBI custody for four days.