The CBI has told a Delhi court in its chargesheet in the NEET paper leak case how it made a series of arrests in the investigation. The agency said 13 accused are currently in judicial custody.
According to the chargesheet, the alleged conspiracy was uncovered through forensic imaging of mobile devices, which helped recover deleted WhatsApp chats and PDF documents containing the leaked questions. The document sets out the sequence of arrests made by the agency in May.
The agency began its action on May 13 with the arrests of Mangilal, Dinesh and Vikas Biwal in Rajasthan. Their mobile phones contained leaked PDFs that had been received through Telegram on April 29. On the same day, the CBI also arrested Yash Yadav in Gurugram and Shubham Khairnar in Nashik.
The chargesheet said Khairnar used the alias “Ap Broker” on WhatsApp to hide his identity and was found to have coordinated the distribution of leaked chemistry questions. Another arrest on May 13 was Dhananjay Lokhande in Pune. He allegedly tried to destroy his phone to remove evidence before he was caught.
Manisha Sanjay Waghmare was arrested in Pune on May 14. After questioning those arrested, the agency arrested the alleged mastermind, PV Kulkarni, from Latur on May 15.
This was followed by the arrest of Manisha Mandhare from Pune on May 16. Shivraj Motegaonkar, founder of a coaching centre in Latur, was arrested on May 17.
The final arrests in the case were made on May 22 and May 26. Manisha Sanjay Havaldar was arrested from Latur on May 22, while Tejas Shah and Dr Manoj Shirure were arrested from Pune and Latur respectively on May 26.
NEET-UG is conducted by the NTA for medical aspirants. On May 12, the NTA cancelled the NEET-UG held on May 3 for admissions to medical courses amid allegations of a paper leak, and a re-examination was held on June 21.
Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan later resigned over the NEET paper leak row following the protests. The chargesheet now places on record the order in which the CBI tracked and arrested those accused in the case.
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Published By:
India Today Web Desk
Published On:
Aug 7, 2026 21:41 IST
