When a student in Rajasthan's coaching hub of Sikar walked into his teacher’s office with two PDFs on his phone, it seemed at first like just another post-exam rumour. Within hours, the teacher realised he was staring at one of the biggest breaches in India’s medical entrance system.
The NEET-UG 2026 examination was cancelled earlier this month following paper leaks and reports of malpractice. The exam will be held again on June 21.
The fateful night
Two hours later, a student named Satish (changed) approached Rajat. “Sir, what should I do?” Satish asked. He showed Rajat two PDFs of a “guess paper” forwarded by his landlord. The document apparently matched around 135 questions from the actual exam paper.
Rajat immediately took Satish to his private office. “Most of them were happy as their exam had gone well while some were also anxious about the result. Soon Satish came to me with the PDFs, I took him to my office separately as I didn’t want to discuss such a sensitive matter in front of the students,” Rajat told HT.
Cross-examination
The first PDF contained about 60 pages of scanned, handwritten chemistry questions. The second PDF contained 87 pages of typed biology questions.
“We were shocked. Satish called his landlord immediately who told him that he got it from his son at around 11 pm on May 2. His son is studying medicine in Kerala. Both of us were conflicted,” Rajat told HT.
Police station drama
They first tried to take the matter to journalists, but were told a police complaint was necessary. So Rajat sent Satish to the local police station.
“There was a sub-inspector. He listened to the matter but asked Satish to return with a written complaint next morning and submit it to the station house officer,” Rajat said. That complaint never reached the next stage.
The SHO of Udhyog Nagar police station, Rajesh Kumar, said, “they never returned next morning although we have been waiting for them. It was such a sensitive tip-off. How could we have lodged an FIR without any strong evidence and a detailed complaint in written?”
The matter did not end there for Rajat. He began looking into earlier paper leak cases, including NEET-2024 and AIPMT-2015, trying to understand how such breaches had occurred in the past.
“This conversation helped me to realise a few things. I was sure that the paper was not leaked from Sikar. In Sikar, the only possible way to leak the paper was from centres once the questions reach there on the exam day. But it had already been leaked and had arrived in Sikar the night before,” Rajat said.
Based on this, he suspected an inside leak at the agency level.
The email to NTA
“I know many of my fellow teachers, other coaching centres, even the students would hate us for making this complaint. But I think it was the right thing to do to save young meritorious students,” Rajat said.
Rajat sent the email from his account using Satish's name. “I am further in possession of: copies/photos of the PDFs, screenshots/photos showing the time and receipt of the files on the mobile device, comparative material showing similarity between the leaked PDFs and the actual examination questions,” an excerpt of the email read.
Arrests in the NEET paper leak case
The matter was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation. According to investigators, two members of the NTA’s paper-setting panel allegedly leaked separate sections of the exam paper before the May 3 test.
The CBI has arrested Manisha Gurunath Mandhare, a senior botany teacher from Pune, and PV Kulkarni from Latur, both of whom were appointed by the NTA as experts on the NEET-UG 2026 paper-setting committee.
Investigators allege that Mandhare had access to the botany and zoology papers, while Kulkarni had access to the chemistry paper. Another accused, Pune-based beauty parlour owner Manisha Waghmare, has been identified as a key link in the network.
So far, nine people have been arrested across five states. They include Mandhare, Kulkarni, Waghmare, Dhananjay Lokhanda, Shubham Khairnar, Mangilal Biwal alias Mangilal Khatik, Vikas Biwal, Dinesh Biwal, and Yash Yadav.
(With inputs from HT's Senjuti Sengupta, Abhishek Sharan, Neeraj Chauhan and Sanjay Maurya)
