Investigators have red-flagged the Centre’s effort to portray the NEET-UG 2024 paper leak as a localised affair in the Supreme Court.

Sources said that the Centre might be trying to downplay the paper leak to avoid the cancellation of the examination, which could lead to loss of face. The NTA conducted the NEET-UG on May 5 in 4,750 centres across 571 cities. Over 23 lakh candidates appeared for it.

The sources added that the Centre was focusing more on the Bihar–Jharkhand aspect of the leak in its arguments in the apex court even though the investigation by the CBI was far from complete.

“The thrust of the affidavits filed by the Centre is that the leak was limited and the question papers were not circulated on social media platforms. However this concept of paper leak is childish in this age of Internet, dark Net and deep Web,” a senior investigator associated with the paper leak probe told The Telegraph on the condition of anonymity.

“The moment the ‘chain of custody’ of question papers is breached, there is no mechanism to quantify the leak. It is also very difficult to pinpoint how the leaked question paper was disseminated because there are so many digital options available. In such a situation it does not matter if the Centre claims that the candidature of a particular number of examinees was cancelled,” the investigator added.

He said the impossibility of quantifying the leak also meant that the beneficiaries could not be identified by scores, centres and locations.

The Economic Offences Unit of the Bihar police had investigated and established that the NEET-UG paper had leaked. The Centre had initially dismissed the possibility of a leak but later handed over the probe to the CBI amid countrywide protests and litigations.

The CBI has registered six FIRs in the case so far.

Apart from the centres in India, the medical entrance exam was also conducted in 14 foreign cities. There is still no clarity about the safe transportation of question papers and answer sheets to the Indian missions and the people who handled them.

An official associated with the probe pointed out that the arrest of Rakesh Ranjan alias Rocky earlier this month was a significant breakthrough because he played a key role in supplying NEET-UG question paper in PDF formats. Rocky is said to be a relative of Sanjeev Mukhiya, the alleged mastermind of the paper leak in Bihar and Jharkhand. He has criminal antecedents and had been allegedly involved in the leak of Teachers Recruitment Examination– III conducted by the Bihar Public Service Commission earlier this year.

“Rocky had provided a mobile phone to Baldev Kumar alias Chintu in which the questions and answers were loaded. He had also lured MBBS students in Patna and Ranchi to solve the questions. The mobile was destroyed after taking out printouts. However, nobody is sure whether the mobile was also used to transmit the question paper to other mobiles or devices and is still a matter of investigation,” the official said.

Earlier this week, the CBI arrested four MBBS students of AIIMS Patna and one from RIMS, Ranchi for allegedly being a part of the group that solved the NEET-UG paper.

The Supreme Court will resume hearing the case on July 22.