NEET-UG leak: CBI chargesheet cites society app logs, call records
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a chargesheet against 13 arrested individuals in the NEET-UG paper leak case, relying on a trove of digital evidence that includes biometric records from a Pune residential society's access control app and mobile phone location data, officials said on Tuesday. All accused are currently in judicial custody.
The chargesheet, filed before a special CBI court in New Delhi on July 28, details how records from the access control app of the society where National Testing Agency (NTA) chemistry expert P.V. Kulkarni lived helped corroborate the presence of students and their parents in April, weeks before the May 3 examination. The app logs were supplemented by call data records (CDR) and location analysis of the suspects' phones, said the officials, who requested anonymity.
At the centre of the case are three Pune-based subject experts on the NTA panel: Mr. Kulkarni (chemistry), Manisha Gurunath Mandhare (zoology and botany), and Manisha Sanjay Havaldar (physics). The CBI alleges they exploited procedural lapses in the NTA's paper-setting process to leak confidential questions for monetary gain.
The agency's investigation began after a beautician, Manisha Sanjay Waghmare, allegedly circulated leaked papers to aspirants in Rajasthan and Haryana through a chain of middlemen. Ms. Waghmare is accused of planting students in special coaching classes conducted by Mr. Kulkarni and Ms. Mandhare in April. The students copied questions dictated by the duo into notebooks, with some portions marked as 'important' or 'very important'. The CBI also found that Ms. Havaldar provided 16 pages of physics questions containing 68 questions to the mother of an aspirant at the behest of Ms. Mandhare.
The leaked material recovered from various aspirants and middlemen was sent to an expert panel constituted by Delhi University. The panel's analysis showed that a significant portion matched four sets of the NEET-UG 2024 question paper — Kailash, Shivalik, Set 2, and Set 3 — in varying degrees. Sets to which the accused experts had access showed up to 85% matching, while sets they were not provided had the fewest matches, the CBI said.
The investigation revealed that paper setting, translations, and back translation were done at the NTA building in Okhla, New Delhi, in a sanitised environment. However, the CBI identified several lapses that were allegedly exploited by the three experts. Mr. Kulkarni is accused of using rough sheets to smuggle small chits with questions and answer options. He reportedly memorised easier questions and reconstructed them each day upon returning to his hotel. Ms. Havaldar and Ms. Waghmare relied more on memory, writing down questions in their subject books after returning to their hotel rooms, the agency alleged.
The experts were engaged in paper-setting work between March and April on different dates, giving them time to return to Pune before the exam and continue coaching, which is prohibited under NTA rules. The CBI has also named a coaching centre owner in connection with the case, though the charge sheet's exact details on his role were not immediately available.
The case has highlighted vulnerabilities in the examination process and has raised demands for stricter security protocols in high-stakes national entrance tests. The CBI investigation is ongoing, and further arrests or supplementary chargesheets are not ruled out.
