Jharkhand school principal quizzed in NEET leak case

Ranchi/ Patna/Ahmedabad: Intensifying its probe into alleged irregularities in this year’s National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test-Undergraduate or NEET-UG, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team on Wednesday visited a school in Hazaribagh in Jharkhand and detained its principal after questioning while another team visited two private schools in Kheda and Panchmahal districts of Gujarat, officials said.

Also Read: Jharkhand exam centres under Bihar police’ radar amid NEET probe

Meanwhile, a court in Patna sent two accused in the NEET “paper leak” to three-day CBI remand for questioning. It came a day after the federal agency sought the custody of suspects who were arrested by the Bihar police’s Economic Offences Unit (EOU).

The developments come close on the heels of the federal agency on Monday taking over the probe into five cases of alleged malpractices in NEET-UG that were being probed by police in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Bihar, besides registering its own first information report (FIR) on Sunday based on a complaint from the Union education ministry.

In Hazaribagh, the CBI team interrogated the principal of Oasis School, Dr Ehsanul Haque, for several hours and later detained him and took him to Patna for further investigation, a senior police officer confirmed HT.

“The CBI team landed in the district around 9.30am and questioned Haque for a long time. The team first took him to the school’s campus at Kallu Chowk, before taking him to his Hasmia Colony-based residence, about 1km from the school, at around 1pm,” the officer said, requesting anonymity.

Some members of the CBI team — comprising of officials from Delhi, Bokaro and Dhanbad — also visited the main branch of the State Bank of India (SBI) in Hazaribagh, around two km from the Oasis School, as the manager of the bank was reportedly custodian of the NEET question papers, the officer added. “Before taking the principal with them, the team also visited the office of Blue Dart Express at Nutan Nagar,” the officer said.

Hazaribagh superintendent of police (SP) Arvind Kumar Singh denied any information regarding the CBI action. “I do not have any official information in this regard... I have also come to know that CBI has taken away the school principal. Any investigating agency can question any person,” he said.

Haque, who was the district coordinator of the NEET-UG in Hazaribagh, while talking to reporters on Tuesday, had denied any tempering of question paper in Hazaribagh and termed the allegations as baseless.

On June 23, a three-member probe team of EOU of Bihar police visited the school and inquired about the conduct of the test and the mechanism to open digital locks of question paper boxes. It came two days after the Bihar Police detained six people from Deoghar in connection with the alleged irregularities in the exam.

“The action was taken as half-burnt question paper of NEET- UG 2024 was recovered from a private school located in Ramakrishna Nagar, Patna, which had the serial code of the exam centre, Oasis School,” an official privy to the CBI probe said, also declining to be named.

In all 2.4 million students sat for this year’s NEET-UG at 4,750 centres spread across 571 cities around the world on May 5.

In Patna, a city court allowed CBI to take two accused — Baldev Kumar alias Chintu and Mukesh Kumar — under its remand for further questioning. Baldev, associated with the notorious Sanjeev Kumar alias Lutan Mukhiya gang, allegedly received the solved answer sheet of the NEET-UG in PDF format on his mobile phone a day before the exam, officials said. Mukesh is also associated with the gang.