Sunday was a day of tragedy for Kasturi Mahalingam of Vilakkudi in Tiruvarur district and Devi Ishwarya of Singampunari in Sivagangai district. Kasturi was among the 1500 students from Tamil Nadu who took the NEET outside the State. While he was writing his exam, his father Krishnasamy Srinivasan, who had accompanied him to Ernakulam for the test, took ill.

By the time Kasturi exited the exam centre at Thammanam, 47-year-old Srinivasan, a government librarian, had died of cardiac arrest. Later, it was learnt that J Kannan, father of Devi Ishwarya, who wrote the NEET exam in Madurai, also died. Kannan, 49, a lorry driver, had accompanied his daughter to Madurai. After the exam, he developed chest pain. He was brought dead at Government Rajaji Hospital.

Meanwhile, question paper goof ups in Madurai and Salem caused stress. In Madurai, 112 students who were to take the test at Noyes Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Narimedu started the exam late as the centre received 100 question papers in Hindi. E Georgina Jacquline, school’s principal said, “We opened the three boxes of the Tamil/English question papers minutes before the exam as per CBSE instructions and while distributing them discovered that the third box contained 100 question papers in Hindi/English.”

While 22 students started the exam at 12.30 pm, 90 students started the test at 3pm. In Salem, students at three centres were left to stew as the question papers for 195 Tamil medium students reached only at noon forcing the students to start the exam at 1pm. Tension prevailed at a Salem centre after a student was not allowed to write the exam as she produced two hall tickets.