A second member of the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) paper preparation committee has been arrested in the NEET-UG 2026 question paper leak case – a senior botany teacher from Pune who allegedly revealed botany and zoology questions in the coaching classes she conducted at her home in April, questions which the CBI says match the actual exam paper – and the entire committee that framed the paper and other senior NTA officers are now under scrutiny, the agency said.
The agency said Manisha Gurunath Mandhari used the same modus operandi as retired chemistry lecturer P V Kulkarni, who was arrested the day before – unraveling an operation that is now forcing more than 2.2 million medical aspirants to retake an exam they had spent years preparing for.
“She participated in the NEET-UG 2026 examination process and was appointed by NTA as an expert. She had full access to the Botany and Zoology question papers,” the CBI said in a statement.
During April, she allegedly mobilized prospective students through her co-accused Manisha Waghmar — a Pune beauty salon owner who was arrested on May 14 — and held classes at her Pune residence where she disclosed questions from papers she had access to.
The probe revealed that Waghmire acted as a joint recruiter for both NTA insiders and the agency, seeking her remand in Delhi on Saturday. She said she had access to the newspaper from at least April 27, almost a week before the examination was conducted, “in collusion with other accused” and NTA insiders.
“During the classes, Mandhare explained and revealed various questions from the subjects of botany and zoology and made the students write them down in their notebooks and also mark in their textbooks. Majority of these questions are in accordance with the actual question paper of NEET-UG 2026 examination held on May 3,” the CBI said. Mandhare will be brought to Delhi for further interrogation.
Officials familiar with the investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity, said their investigation has now revealed that “two sets of question papers — one handwritten and one typed — had been leaked from the NTA,” and Kulkarni and Mandhari were responsible for each of them. The chemistry paper is attributed to Kulkarni; Botany and Zoology Papers to Mandhare.
“Investigation is still ongoing with the special teams and the investigation conducted so far has shown the actual source of leakage of Chemistry and Biology papers as well as the middlemen involved in mobilizing students who paid thousands of rupees to attend private coaching classes where the questions to come in the NEET UG-2026 exam were dictated and discussed.”
One of the officials cited above said that “the entire committee that prepared the newspaper and other senior officials of the NTA are under scrutiny” and that more arrests may follow in the coming days.
The agency is also investigating whether Kulkarni and Mandhar were involved in earlier paper leaks.
In Delhi, the agency on Saturday produced Kulkarni and Waghmare before a special judge at Delhi’s Ross Avenue Courts and sought their custody for 14 days. The court of Special Judge Ajay Gupta sent them to the custody of the CBI for 10 days. While seeking their detention, the agency described them as “part of an organized paper leak gang” and said that both had destroyed question papers after the exam on May 3.
The arrest of Kulkarni and Mandhar marks a turning point in India’s long history of exam fraud.
“This is the first time in the paper leak investigations that we have found the source of the leak at NTA,” said another officer who requested anonymity. “Once the paper was leaked and its PDFs were posted on messaging groups, there could have been hundreds of recipients. We will trace them all but first work on the source of the leak and their associates.”
From two NTA insiders, the paper traveled through a chain of intermediaries across six states before reaching the students on the night of May 2. Investigators allege that training class notes formed the basis of a PDF of 500-600 questions that was circulated via Telegram; Nashik-based Shubham Khairnar passed it to Gurugram-based Yash Yadav, who sold it to Mangilal Bewal — also identified in court documents as Mangilal Khatik — for $10 thousand, provided that about 150 questions match the actual paper. Mangilal distributed printed copies to three family members, friends of his son Vikas, and his guru Satyanarayan.
Searches at six locations in the past 24 hours have yielded incriminating documents, laptops, bank and mobile phone data, in addition to digital evidence already undergoing forensic examination.
So far, nine people have been arrested in five states in four days: Mandir, Kulkarni and Waghmare from Pune; Dhananjay Lokhanda from Ahilyanagar; Khairnar from Nashik; Mangilal Bewal, also known as Mangilal Khatik, Vikas Bewal and Dinesh Bewal of Jaipur; Yadav is from Gurugram.
The agency said: “The Commercial International Bank is committed to conducting a comprehensive, impartial and professional investigation into this case.”
