Other investigative agencies of the country including the CBI are also engaged in the investigation of the NEET case which has gained momentum across the country. In this connection, the Economic Offenses Unit (EOU) of Bihar Police has sent its report to the Central Education Ministry.
The evidence found during the investigation has been sent to the Central Forensic Laboratory in Delhi and EOU teams are continuously conducting raids. This team of Bihar Police has also detained six people from Deoghar in Jharkhand.
The most important thing that has come out in the EOU report is that the team has talked about paper leak, which the education ministry of the central government has been denying from the very first day. According to Ritika Chopra’s report in the Indian Express, this message of the Bihar government to the Center has been sent on the fact that its EOU has matched the 68 questions found from the burnt pieces of the photocopy of the alleged question paper with the original question paper, which the NTA had shared with the EOU five days ago.
Apart from the 68 questions being exactly the same as the original paper, another thing that corroborates the Bihar paper leak claim is that the serial numbers of these questions on the burnt paper and the original paper are also the same. Ritika states in her report, “Though the burnt question papers were found on May 5 itself, the day the exam was held and the suspected candidates were arrested, but, according to sources, the delay on the part of the EOU in matching them with the NEET-UG question paper was due to the initial reluctance of the NTA to share information, especially the question papers, with the state government.”
In the report submitted by EOU to the Ministry of Education on June 22, it is also said that the unique exam centre code recovered by Bihar Police from burnt pieces of paper from the house of the arrested candidates belongs to Oasis School. Oasis School, affiliated to CBSE, was made an exam centre by NTA in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand.
EOU took the help of forensic lab to match the burnt pieces of paper with the original paper and its questions. Based on the report of this unit of Bihar Police, the Education Ministry decided to hand over the investigation of the case to CBI on 22 June. Along with this, EOU arrested five more suspects on 23 June, taking the total number of people arrested in the paper leak case to 18.
Currently, Bihar EOU is investigating when and where the paper leak happened. NTA has recently shared the chain of custody of the question paper (who got the question paper and when), with the help of which EOU is trying to trace the way the paper reached Oasis School from NTA’s custody to identify the leak.
All the arrested accused testified before the police that four of them had memorised the answers of the leaked question paper a day before the NEET-UG exam on May 5.
When the NEET results were declared, the four got 581, 483, 300 and 185 marks out of 720. Even though only four candidates have been arrested, based on the statements of the accused, the EOU believes that 30 more candidates, who were staying with these four accused in Rajbanshi Nagar, also benefited from the paper leak.
Initially, Patna police did not consider it a paper leak, while the statements were indicating something else. As the pressure increased, the Bihar government handed over the responsibility of investigating the entire case to the independent agency EOU. Now only the CBI investigation will be able to tell whether the paper was really leaked and if yes, then who are responsible for it.