New Delhi, 16 May

The CBI on Saturday arrested a biology lecturer who was part of the National Testing Agency's (NTA) paper-setting committee for NEET-UG held on May 3, officials said.

The arrest was made on the basis of questioning of alleged kingpin PV Kulkarni and other accused in the paper leak case, they said.

The biology lecturer Manisha Mandhare was arrested here after being questioned by the agency at its headquarters, they said.

She was allegedly involved in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate) examination process and was appointed by the NTA as an expert, they said.

Officials said Mandhare had complete access to the Botany and Zoology question papers.

Mandhare is alleged to have mobilised prospective NEET examination candidates in April 2026 through Manisha Wagmare of Pune, who was arrested on May 14, and conducted special coaching classes for these students at her Pune residence.

It is alleged that Mandhare dictated leaked questions and responses to select students and took lakhs of rupees as a fee.

Most of these questions tallied with the questions that appeared in the examination on 3 May. The NEET exam was cancelled following allegations of a paper leak.

The CBI had arrested Professor PV Kulkarni, a domain expert in chemistry from Latur on Friday. Kulkarni for years served on panels involved in setting the NEET question paper.

Exploiting his privileged access to confidential material, Kulkarni allegedly hosted special coaching classes at his house in the last week of April and dictated to his students questions, options and answers which appeared in the NEET UG paper on May 3.

"During the last week of April, 2026, he had mobilised students, with the help of another accused namely Manisha Waghmare who was arrested on May 14 by CBI," a spokesperson said in a statement.

Students allegedly paid several lakh rupees to attend the sessions where they wrote the questions down in their notebooks and later "tallied exactly" with the actual NEET-UG paper conducted on May 3, the spokesperson said.

The federal agency has registered an FIR and formed teams to probe the alleged paper leak that resulted in the cancellation of the exam held on May 3.

The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) was conducted across 551 Indian cities and at 14 overseas centres.

Nearly 23 lakh candidates had registered for the test, which was administered by the NTA across the country.

According to the NTA, information regarding alleged malpractice was received on the evening of May 7, four days after the exam was held.

The NTA said the inputs were escalated to central agencies the following morning for "independent verification and necessary action."