NEET case: CBI team interrogates Jharkhand school principal

A CBI team on Wednesday, 27 June visited a school in Jharkhand's Hazaribag and quizzed its principal in connection with the alleged irregularities in medical entrance test NEET, an official said.

The CBI team interrogated the principal of Oasis School Dr Ehsanul Haque, who was the district coordinator of the NEET-UG exam in Hazaribag, for several hours and took him to a Charhi-based guest house in Hazaribag where he and a few other persons were reportedly quizzed till late evening, sources said.

Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO), Hazaribag Sadar, Kumar Shivashish said that they came to know about the investigation from other sources but they have not been officially communicated in this regard.

Sources said that a 12-member CBI team reached Hazaribag on Tuesday, 25 June evening. An eight-member team visited the school on Wednesday, 26 June and some of the team members also visited the main branch of the State Bank of India (SBI) in the district, as the manager of the bank was reportedly the custodian of the question papers.

The bank had reportedly received the question papers sent by a courier service operator in an e-rickshaw, the sources said.

The CBI team members, however, refused to divulge anything to media persons. They said that they would submit the investigation report to their headquarters.

Haque, while talking to media persons on Tuesday, had denied any tempering of question papers in Hazaribag and termed the allegations as baseless.

Earlier, a three-member probe team of the economic offences unit (EOU) of Bihar Police on 23 June visited the school and inquired about the conduct of the test and the mechanism to open digital locks of question paper boxes.

On 21 June, the Bihar Police detained six people from Jharkhand's Deoghar district in connection with the alleged irregularities in the medical entrance exam.

NEET-UG was conducted by the NTA on 5 May with around 24 lakh candidates taking part in it. The results were announced on 4 June, but they were followed by allegations of question paper leaks in states such as Bihar, besides other irregularities.