- By Shubham Bajpai
- Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:08 AM (IST)
- Source:JND
- NEET-UG 2026 paper leak was an inside job.
- Paper-setting teachers memorized and shared questions with students.
- Leak bypassed CBI-recommended security measures after 2024.
The political firestorm that started with the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak triggered the resignation of former Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and stricter legislation. While this entire matter has left students, parents and other sections of society with numerous questions about the system of examinations, a significant claim has now emerged that the leak was an inside job instead of being perpetrated from outside.
As per sources cited by news agency PTI, the leak happened because of the involvement of teachers who set the paper. The report states that the teachers responsible for preparing and translating the question paper managed to memorise the questions and later shared the final questions to a closed group of students in their special tuition classes in Pune, the report added.
CBI's recommendation after 2024 leak prevented repeat in 2025
Notably, the NEET-UG paper was leaked in 2024 too. Back then, the CBI had made several suggestions to the NTA regarding systemic changes related to the transportation and handling of the question paper and conduct of the examination.
The NTA implemented these suggestions in 2025 and 2026; hence, technically, no "leak" took place.
What happened in 2026 was completely different from previous leak cases, as 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.
How did paper leak happen?
The teachers allegedly got a "lot of time" with the final version of the paper. While preparing the paper, the teachers were kept in a sanitised environment at the facility. But as per the rules, they were allowed to go to their homes every evening. The teachers managed to memorise the questions, returned home, prepared a question bank and gave them to a closed group of students.
They told them that the questions were "very important", but stopped short of giving any inkling that the questions were from the upcoming NEET paper.
The investigating agency alleged that a local beautician, Manisha Waghmare, was known to these teachers. She managed to get the question bank from some students who attended the classes of these teachers.
Waghmare then typed the questions into a paper format and sold it to Dhananjay Nivrutti Lokhande, who passed it on to other middlemen.
This chain extended further, and the distribution spanned multiple states, they said. As per CBI, Waghmare's involvement made the leak big enough to come to light, as it was the same paper that landed in the hands of one of the aspirants who alerted the National Testing Agency.
Through Lokhande, the question paper circulated among various individuals for lakhs of rupees, the report added.
(With PTI Inputs)