The CBI on Saturday conducted searches at seven locations in Gujarat in connection with the alleged paper leak case in the NEET-UG 2024 and arrested a journalist in Jharkhand, sources said.

A CBI official said Jamaluddin Ansari, a journalist with a Hindi newspaper, was arrested on Saturday for allegedly trying to help the principal and vice-principal of a Hazaribagh school, both of whom are accused in the paper leak case.

“Oasis School’s principal Ehsanul Haque and vice-principal Imtiaz Alam have already been arrested by the agency in the same case,” said an official.

The CBI on Saturday searched the premises of suspects in Anand, Kheda, Ahmedabad and Godhra districts of Gujarat. The probe agency is investigating a larger conspiracy spread across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Bihar, Delhi and Jharkhand.

A special CBI court in Godhra on Saturday granted the probe agency four-day custody of Jay Jalaram School’s principal Purushottam Sharma, teacher Tushar Bhatt, and middlemen Vibhor Anand and Arif Vohra, all of whom were alleged to be involved in the NEET-UG irregularities in Godhra.

The Gujarat police had arrested five people, including the principal and the teacher, in connection with the paper leak case.

The CBI investigation has shown that the examination centres in Godhra and Kheda chosen by the National Testing Agency were controlled by the same school administration, officials said.

According to sources, the accused allegedly asked candidates arranged by them from Odisha, Bihar, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh to mark Godhra as their examination centre and choose Gujarati as their language, they said.