Some NEET candidates had to part with original documents, pay later: CBI probe

“Initially, the CBI had arrested Yash Yadav from Gurgaon and Mangilal Biwal and his associates from Rajasthan. Mangilal received the leaked paper from Yadav for Rs 10 lakh on the condition that around 150 questions would match the original. He allegedly received the papers on Telegram on April 29 and distributed printed copies to his sons, cousin and others including a teacher,” a CBI official said.

During the searches, the CBI recovered several documents from Yadav and after scrutiny, it was found that some were original documents of students. “Similarly, several original documents were recovered from the arrested persons in Pune. The CBI is learnt to have recovered original documents of at least 12 students. They are being approached to record their statements,” a source said.

On Wednesday, the CBI arrested Dr Manoj Shirure, a Latur‑based physician, and Tejas Harshadkumar Shah, a Physics faculty member at a Pune coaching institute, in connection with the alleged leak of questions, taking the total number of arrests in the case to 13. The CBI also recovered Rs 5 lakh from the house of Dr Shirure’s sister on May 21. “It has been found during investigation that Dr Shirure took Chemistry questions from retired teacher P V Kulkarni in the third week of April and collected Rs 5 lakh from the wife of co-accused Shivraj Motegaonkar, founder of RCC Classes in Latur,” a CBI official said.

The probe has also found that Shirure helped two other doctors whose children had obtained Chemistry questions from Kulkarni and had paid Rs 3 lakh per student. Of this, he had received 50% of the amount collected from the two students.

Motegaonkar is a friend of Kulkarni who was involved in the examination process on behalf of the NTA. Searches at his institute and residence, the CBI said, resulted in the recovery of a Chemistry question bank which contained exactly the same questions which appeared in the NEET examination.