NEW DELHI: The involvement of the same set of individuals in setting as well as translation of question papers during the NEET-UG 2026 was one of the reasons behind the compromise of the medical entrance examination, sources said.
The CBI is understood to have conveyed this lacunae informally to the National Testing Agency (NTA) and may include it in its formal recommendations as well, they said.
The NEET-UG 2026 irregularities were of a completely different nature than those of 2024, where a centre in-charge, in alleged collusion with the leak racket, facilitated theft and circulation of question paper, officials involved in the process said.
After the 2024 investigation, the CBI had made several suggestions to the NTA regarding systemic changes pertaining to the transportation (of question paper), handling and conduct of the examination to ensure that sanctity of the paper is not vitiated, they said.
These suggestions were implemented by the NTA in the conduct of NEET in 2025 and 2026; hence, technically, no “leak” took place, they said.
In the 2026 examination, the paper setters on the NTA panel to whom the setting and Marathi translation work was outsourced – chemistry teacher P V Kulkari, physics teacher Manisha Gurunath Mandhare and biology teacher Manisha Sanjay Havaldar – managed to memorise and share the final questions to a closed group of students in their special tuition classes in Pune, the sources said.
The teachers were involved in the paper setting as well as translation work and were allegedly getting a “lot of time” with the final version of the paper for the examination held on May 3, they said.
They were kept in a sanitised environment during the process, which was spread over a number of days, and were going to their residences, taking tuition and returning for their duties the next day, the CBI has found.
They memorised the questions from the final version, built a question bank upon return and gave these questions to a closed group of students, marking them “very important”, without giving any inkling that the questions were from the upcoming NEET paper, they said.
The agency alleged that a local beautician, Manisha Waghmare, who was known to these teachers, managed to get this bank from some students attending these classes, which she typed into a question paper format and further sold to Dhananjay Nivrutti Lokhande, who passed it on to other middlemen; the purported questions were then distributed across multiple states, they said.
Had Waghmare not entered the picture, the paper would not have reached such a large number of aspirants, and the irregularity would never have come to light, they said.
Through Lokhande, the paper was circulated among various individuals in return for lakhs of rupees, the sources said.
One such paper landed in the hands of an aspirant who brought it to the notice of the NTA, which cancelled the NEET-UG 2026 on May 12.
The education ministry handed the investigation to the CBI, which swung into action and cracked the case within days of taking over, arresting 13 individuals, including the three lecturers, Waghmare, people associated with the coaching centres and middlemen, the sources said.
Within nearly two months, the CBI unveiled the entire conspiracy and filed its chargesheet before a special court here against 13 accused persons, including Kulkarni, Havaldar, Mandhare, Waghmare and Lokhande, among others.
“A total of 13 accused have been arrested in the case, which included three NTA subject experts of chemistry, biology and physics. Several middlemen who sourced and distributed the leaked questions have also been identified and arrested.
“Two individuals associated with coaching institutes have also been arrested for obtaining these leaked question papers from the above experts. The money trail analysis was done, and several bank accounts, bank lockers and a demat account of the accused have been frozen,” the CBI said in a statement on Tuesday.