Three copies of a 60‑page PDF surfaced on a WhatsApp group in Sikar, Rajasthan. The file listed 135 out of 400 NEET questions with exactly correct answers. That is why the National Testing Agency voided the exam in 2024. The leak, now in NDTV possession, proves the system’s cracks were not just rumors.
The PDF landed on the phone of Shashikant Suthar, an operator at a paying‑guest facility. He forwarded it, and a colleague cross‑checked each line. The document had questions and answers in strict sequence. “We saw that every answer matched the question,” he said. That verification made the file a smoking gun.”
And yet the questions didn’t arrive in a vacuum. The CBI says the leak unfolded in stages: insiders inside NTA’s workflow, intermediaries passing the file to a network, and candidates across seven states sharing it. The chain started inside the examination ecosystem and then became a wildfire among aspirants. The investigation shows a sophisticated plot, not a one‑off mistake.
Because the evidence was strong, the NTA canceled the entire exam. “We had to act fast,” NTA’s spokesperson said. The exam could have ruined lives if left unaltered. Meanwhile, CBI lawyers seized the PDF as a pivotal link. They now track every line to locate the original source and identify the masterminds.
So far, investigators have taken ten people into custody: a Pune‑based teacher, Manisha Gurunath Mandhare, who helped craft botany and zoology questions, and nine others connected to the circulation network. The arrests show the authorities’ resolve to break the chain. Camouflage, phishing, and big‑data hacks made the process look easy, but the system had room for a single point of failure.
Truth is, the leak exposes the fragile architecture of India’s high‑stakes exams. It questions whether safety protocols are adequate when students’ futures hang in balance. The lingering question: how can a nation with endless question banks still see a leak that misplaces 135 questions? The answer might reshape the way we guard knowledge‑based tests.
