RANCHI: A first-year MBBS student of the 2023 batch from Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the NEET paper leak case.
The arrest coincides with the arrest of four students from AIIMS Patna on Thursday, who are said to be members of the paper solvers gang.
According to sources, the RIMS medical student, named Surbhi Kumari, was first interrogated by the CBI on July 17 and was kept under police custody in Hostel No. 3 of RIMS on Wednesday night. On Thursday, she was called to the CBI office for further interrogation.
After about eight hours of questioning on Thursday, the CBI finally arrested her in the evening. RIMS PRO Dr. Rajiv Ranjan confirmed that the student is now in CBI custody.
“The student belonged to the 2023 batch which is a first-year student and she is now under the custody of CBI. They initially approached the administration for some initial information from the student and afterwards yesterday they again approached for further investigation in the same and then they proceeded with the custody of the student,” said the PRO.
The RIMS administration will fully cooperate with the CBI in the investigation of the case as and when required, he added.
Sources also claimed that the CBI has seized the student's mobile phones, laptops, other electronic gadgets, and documents. She is being considered part of the question solvers gang that solved the 2024 NEET question papers after they were leaked from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand.
The CBI is said to have gathered clues about the medical students arrested from Patna on Thursday. Notably, the CBI arrested five people, including four MBBS students of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Patna, in connection with the NEET-UG question paper leak case.
The AIIMS Patna students have been accused of helping the notorious 'solver gang' of Nalanda solve the leaked question papers.
The fifth person arrested in the case has been identified as Surendra Kumar, who revealed to interrogators that the AIIMS Patna students were taken to a hotel in Patna to solve the leaked question papers ahead of the examination held on May 5.
The development came barely two days after the arrest of two key accused: Pankaj Kumar alias Aditya from Patna and Raju Singh from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand.
Pankaj Kumar, a resident of Bokaro in Jharkhand, was arrested from Patna on charges of stealing the question paper from the National Testing Agency trunk in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh ahead of the examination held on May 5.
Pankaj is a 2017-batch civil engineer from the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Jamshedpur, Jharkhand. The second accused, identified as Raju Singh, was arrested from a guest house located in Hazaribagh’s Ramnagar locality under Katkamdag police station. He has been charged with helping Pankaj in the leak of the question paper.
