PATNA: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday took Sanjeev Kumar Singh, alias Sanjeev Mukhiya, on a four-day remand for interrogation in connection with the NEET-UG 2024 question paper leak case. Mukhiya, the alleged mastermind behind several question paper leak rackets, was arrested from Patna last Friday.
CBI special judge Sunil Kumar-2 granted the four-day remand after a petition was filed seeking his custody for interrogation in the undergraduate medical entrance exam case. Although the CBI had requested a seven-day remand, the court granted only four.
Mukhiya, a native of Bihar’s Nalanda district, is believed to be at the centre of an inter-state solver gang involved in leaking question papers of various national-level exams.
“We hope to get substantial clue in the medical entrance exam question paper leak case,” said an investigating officer on condition of anonymity.
During an earlier interrogation by Bihar Police’s Economic Offences Unit (EOU), Mukhiya reportedly claimed that he had helped several politicians, doctors and government officers by securing medical college seats for their children. He also confessed to maintaining connections with teachers at private coaching institutes, who would send candidates to him.
He disclosed that the leaks were carried out in collusion with certain printing press employees. “As soon as his men would inform him about question of a particular examination being printed in a press, he would start his work and contact them,” the officer said. Mukhiya would allegedly offer hefty bribes to gain access to the papers.
Once the question papers were dispatched from the press, his men coordinated with carrier agents. The examination centre authorities were reportedly aware of only two locks on the boxes carrying the question papers, while Mukhiya had access to a third hidden lock. He would open the boxes, make xerox copies of the papers, reseal them carefully, and send them to the examination centres without raising suspicion.
The xeroxed question papers were solved by his solver teams and passed on to the candidates before the exams. For the NEET-UG examination, the gang charged between Rs 40 to 50 lakh per candidate.
Mukhiya claimed to have strong connections in examination rackets operating in Dehradun, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Kolkata, Gurugram, Noida and Gandhinagar. “We used to take help of each other in our work,” an investigating officer quoted him as saying.
Revealing his personal motivation, Mukhiya reportedly told interrogators that he entered the question paper leak business to accumulate enough money to make his wife an MLA and eventually an MP.
He said he had expanded his network to states including Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Delhi, Punjab and West Bengal.
Additional Director General (ADG) of EOU, Naiyar Hasnain Khan, said information had been sought regarding the cases registered against Mukhiya in other states. “We have shared relevant information to police officers of different states where Mukhiya has been links,” Khan said.
The ADG clarified that Mukhiya was arrested from an apartment near Saguna Mor under Danapur police limits in connection with the Bihar constable and teachers’ recruitment exam leak cases being probed by the state’s investigating agency.
Mukhiya also confessed during interrogation that his son, Dr Shiv Prakash, and his associate, Rocky, were active members of the gang. He admitted to his involvement in leaks of question papers of NEET, BPSC, and constable recruitment exams in both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
