New Delhi, May 16: A Delhi court on Saturday sent the alleged kingpin in the NEET paper leak case, Prahlad Vithalrao Kulkarni, and another accused, Manisha Sanjay Waghmare, to CBI custody for 10 days, agreeing with the agency that their interrogation was needed to unearth the entire conspiracy.
The development came as biology lecturer Manisha Mandhare, who was part of the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) paper-setting committee, was arrested here on Saturday after being questioned by the agency at its headquarters.
Special CBI judge Ajay Gupta granted 10 days’ custody to the CBI after Special Public Prosecutor Neetu Gupta sought a 14-day remand for the interrogation of Kulkarni and Waghmare, saying there was a larger conspiracy involved and both needed to be taken to various parts of the country for the probe, which was at an initial stage.
According to the case file, the court said, accused Waghmare conspired with a public servant associated with the NTA and others to receive the question paper and answers of the NEET exam, after which she provided it to several people, including some of the accused, such as Dhananjay Lokhande, for monetary benefit.
The probe report, it noted, said that she also destroyed the leaked question paper after the exam was conducted on May 3.
Regarding Kulkarni’s role, the court noted that he, along with Waghmare and several others, provided the “confidential exam-related material” to the “selected students”, for which the accused “subject expert” received a “substantial amount of money.”
He also later destroyed the material and caused the disappearance of evidence, and after being arrested, both the accused did not disclose the names of “all people involved in the circulation of the leaked paper”, the court noted.
It allowed the CBI a 10-day custody of the accused, noting that the agency cited several grounds, including that there was a larger conspiracy involved, they needed to be taken to various parts of the country for the probe and that the investigation was at an initial stage.
The court also noted other reasons for their custodial interrogation — unearthing of the entire conspiracy, recovery of all relevant incriminating material, including digital evidence and the financial trail, and prevention of further destruction of evidence by other active members of the syndicate.
It rejected the argument of Kulkarni’s counsel, who opposed the custody plea, saying no one from the NTA had been arrested and that the NTA assigned the task of setting the question paper to different persons and later collected their respective sets of questions from them, but none of the assigned people knew whether the questions provided by them would form part of the original question paper.
In its remand paper, the agency said its probe had revealed that Waghmare was in contact with co-accused Dhananjay Lokhande and was known to Kulkarni through Manisha Mandhare, and that “Kulkarni provided the questions to certain persons through Waghmare”.
The agency told the court that “Manisha Waghmare and Prahlad Kulkarni are in conspiracy with others in obtaining and circulating the leaked question paper”.
According to the CBI, Kulkarni, a resident of Pune, was a lecturer of Chemistry involved in the process of examination on behalf of NTA and had access to the question papers.
It had earlier said that during the last week of April this year, Kulkarni had mobilised students, with the help of Waghmare, and conducted special coaching classes for these students at his residence in Pune.
“He dictated the questions along with options and the correct answers during these special coaching classes, and the questions so dictated were handwritten by students in their notebooks and have exactly tallied with the actual question paper of NEET-UG 2026 Examination held on May 3,” the agency had alleged after his arrest on May 15.
Waghmare, also a resident of Pune, had been arrested a day earlier. They were brought to the national capital on a transit remand.
Earlier on Friday, the court had sent accused Dhananjay Lokhande to CBI custody for six days.
On Thursday, five others, Shubham Khairnar from Nashik, Mangilal Biwal, Vikas Biwal and Dinesh Biwal from Jaipur, and Yash Yadav from Gurugram, were sent to CBI custody till May 20.
The NEET (UG) 2026 exam for admission to undergraduate courses in medical colleges, held on May 3, was cancelled on Tuesday amid allegations of paper leak.
The government had asked the CBI to carry out a comprehensive inquiry into the “irregularities”. (PTI)
