NEW DELHI, May 16: The CBI on Saturday arrested a biology lecturer who was part of the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) paper-setting committee for NEET-UG held on May 3, officials said.
The arrest was made on the basis of questioning of alleged kingpin P V Kulkarni and other accused in the paper leak case, they said.
The biology lecturer Manisha Mandhare was arrested here after being questioned by the agency at its headquarters, they said.
She was allegedly involved in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) examination process and was appointed by the NTA as an expert, they said.
Officials said Mandhare had complete access to the Botony and Zoology question papers.
Mandhare is alleged to have mobilised prospective NEET examination candidates in April 2026 through Manisha Wagmare of Pune, who was arrested on May 14, and conducted special coaching classes for these students at her Pune residence.
It is alleged that Mandhare dictated leaked questions and responses to select students and took lakhs of rupees as fee.
Most of these questions tallied with the questions that appeared in the examination on May 3. The NEET exam was cancelled following allegations of a paper leak.
The CBI had arrested Professor P V Kulkarni, a domain expert in chemistry from Latur on Friday. Kulkarni for years served on panels involved in setting the NEET question paper.
Exploiting his privileged access to confidential material, Kulkarni allegedly hosted special coaching classes at his house in the last week of April and dictated to his students questions, options and answers which appeared in the NEET UG paper on May 3.
“During the last week of April, 2026, he had mobilised students, with the help of another accused namely Manisha Waghmare who was arrested on May 14 by CBI,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Students allegedly paid several lakh rupees to attend the sessions where they wrote the questions down in their notebooks and later “tallied exactly” with the actual NEET-UG paper conducted on May 3, the spokesperson said.
The federal agency has registered an FIR and formed teams to probe the alleged paper leak that resulted in the cancellation of the exam held on May 3.The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) was conducted across 551 Indian cities and at 14 overseas centres.
Nearly 23 lakh candidates had registered for the test, which was administered by the NTA across the country.
According to the NTA, information regarding alleged malpractice was received on the evening of May 7, four days after the exam was held.The NTA said the inputs were escalated to central agencies the following morning for “independent verification and necessary action.”
DELHI COURT SENDS KINGPIN, CO-ACCUSED TO 10-DAY CUSTODY
A Delhi court on Saturday sent the alleged kingpin in the NEET paper leak case, P V Kulkarni, and another accused, Manisha Waghmare, to CBI custody for 10 days.
Special CBI judge Ajay Gupta remanded Kulkarni and Waghmare in CBI custody after the probe agency submitted that the duo needed to be taken outside the national capital for further investigation and that the larger conspiracy had to be investigated.
Special Public Prosecutor Neetu Gupta appeared for the federal agency and sought a 14-day remand for the interrogation of the two accused.
During the proceedings, the CBI said that Kulkarni was a subject expert and had been associated with setting up the 2026 NEET UG question paper.It said that co-accused Dhananjay Lokhande had collected the leaked material from Manisha Waghmare.Considering the detailed arguments made by the agency and the counsel for the accused, the court remanded the two to CBI custody for 10 days.
According to the CBI, Kulkarni was a lecturer of Chemistry involved in the process of examination on behalf of NTA and had access to the question papers.It had earlier said that during the last week of April this year, Kulkarni had mobilised students, with the help of Waghmare, and conducted special coaching classes for these students at his residence in Pune. (PTI)
