Yesterday, Friday, November 22, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed the fifth chargesheet against five accused in the theft of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET-UG) 2024 question papers. The charge sheet was submitted to Patna's special CBI court.
According to the bureau's official statement, the chargesheet was filed under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 109 (abetment), 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 380 (theft), 201 (causing evidence disappearance), 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property), and Section 13(2) read with Section 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (as amended in 2018), The Hindu reports.
The five accused are Amit Kumar Singh of Dhanbad, Jharkhand, Sudip Kumar and Yuvraj Kumar of Bokaro, Jharkhand, Abhimanyu Patel of Nalanda, Bihar, and Amit Kumar of Patna, Bihar.
This brings the total number of accused with chargesheets on them in the case to 45, all of whom are in judicial custody.
The CBI has filed four chargesheets against 40 other accused on August 1, September 19, October 5, and November 7. On June 23, the CBI took over the probe at Patna's Shastri Nagar police station.
The names of candidates who allegedly benefited from the paper theft, as well as MBBS students who solved the stolen paper or took the exam as impersonators, have already been identified and shared with the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the Ministry of Education.
According to the investigations, Pankaj Kumar illegally accessed a NEET-UG 2024 question paper from Oasis School in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, on May 5 in the morning. He was acting in collaboration with Oasis School principal Ahsanul Haque, who is also the city NTA coordinator, as well as Vice-Principal Muhammad Imtiyaz Alam, the centre superintendent.
