Bhubaneswar: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested the suspected key conspirator from Dhanbad in Jharkhand, taking the total arrests in the NEET-UG paper leak probe to seven.
The accused has been identified as Aman Singh.
The arrests came a day after the probe agency officials nabbed the principal and vice-principal of Oasis School in Jharkhand, identified as Ehsanul Haque and Imtiaz Alam, respectively.
Sources said Haque was appointed the city coordinator by National Testing Agency (NTA) for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET-UG 2024).
Earlier, the CBI had arrested a Hindi media professional— Jamaluddin Ansari—from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand.
Arrests in Bihar, Gujarat; CBI in Kolkata
The Jharkhand arrests follow CBI officials confirming the arrest of two persons—identified as Manish Prakash and Ashutosh—from Patna in connection to the probe. While Ashutosh had been accused of arranging safe premises for the students, Manish allegedly took the candidates to a school to ‘prepare’ them for the exam, an ANI report claimed.
Earlier on Sunday (July 30), the CBI had made arrests in Gujarat. The owner of a private school, Jay Jalaram School, near Godhra—Dixit Patel— was arrested for allegedly soliciting between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh from candidates. He had allegedly promised the candidates to enhance their scores.
The CBI, which had registered a criminal case on June 23 against the alleged irregularities in the NEET-UG and UGG-NET conducted by the NTA, also raided an apartment in the housing society in New Town on the outskirts of Kolkata.
SC to hear plea on July 8
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a batch of pleas related to the allegations of paper leak and irregularities in the conduct of NEET-UG exam on July 8. The cause list of the apex court states that the matter has been listed before a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra.