CBI flags major security lapses in NEET-UG 2026 exam preparation by NTA

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has flagged a series of security shortcomings in NEET-UG 2026. The agency officials highlighted the absence of security measures such as frisking and checking in the "confidential section" of the NTA, proper CCTV coverage as well as the involvement of the same group of individuals across multiple stages of question paper preparation and finalisation.

The CBI, in its 94-page chargesheet filed before a special court in New Delhi, said that the CBI had pointed to the lack of compartmentalisation in the National Testing Agency's (NTA) workflow. According to the agency, this structural lapse would allow anyone to get access to the complete final papers for the medical exam National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET).

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The agency noted the four crucial stages of the work flow—item writing, moderation, vetting and translation.

The Bureau says that during the item writing stage, experts are called in to provide questions and answers, without being aware of whether their contributions will ultimately be included in the final examination paper.

This procedure is followed by moderation, wherein experts are called to select the questions for four sets to be prepared for NTA with uniform difficulty, in which 45 questions in each set—a total of 180 questions—are finalised.

The subsequent stage involves vetting, where the subject experts solve the question sets finalised by the moderators. The answers proposed by the vetters and moderators are then checked for consistency. In case of disagreement, the moderators and vetters sit with the NTA director to solve the issue.

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Then the translation of the finalised question sets into vernacular languages by subject experts. The translated versions are reverse-translated into English by subject experts to ensure accuracy and prevent the loss of context in translation.

“Ideally, the above steps should be done by distinct experts handling each phase to prevent any single individual from grasping the exam's full scope,” officials said.

"However, in the process actually followed for the NEET UG 2026 examination, it is found that many experts have been involved in multiple stages. Further, from the moderation step onwards, the experts concerned have full access to final sets of questions.”

"This is particularly so in the translation/back-translation stage, as here a single expert can see all four of the final master sets," alleges the agency.

The CBI in its investigation had documented the vulnerability of 'The Confidential Section' of NTA, which operates from an entire wing of the first floor of the NSIC building in Okhla.

"No practice of checking or frisking of experts," alleges the Bureau about the NTA when entering or exiting the confidential section.

The agency alleges that the absence of security measures enabled the Chemistry expert P V Kulkarni to transcribe 135 questions onto "small chits of paper" and smuggle them to his hotel room "unnoticed" for three days while he was working there.

According to the CBI, the three accused lecturers—Manisha Gurunath Mandhare for Zoology and Botany, and Manisha Sanjay Havaldar for Physics—allegedly utilised the structural and security lapses in the workflow of the paper finalisation to reproduce with high accuracy which they shared with a close group of students for financial gain.

Manisha Waghmare, a beautician, was alleged to have gained access to these papers. She planted students in these special classes of Kulkarni and Mandhare

These questions were allegedly accessed by a beautician Manisha Waghmare who planted some students in these special classes of Kulkarni and Mandhare. Waghmare was able to recreate the question paper by using the notebooks of these students, which she sold through a series of middlemen.

According to the Bureau’s chargesheet, one such paper landed in the hands of an aspirant who complained about the paper leak to the NTA.

The CBI’s findings state that Mandhare, who worked as an English-to-Marathi translator for Botany and a back translator for Zoology, would highlight relevant paragraphs in NCERT textbooks after completing her assigned work for the day and returning to her hotel room.

"Due to her decades of experience with the same material, she was easily able to correlate the questions with the NCERT textbook material. Accused Manisha Gurunath Mandhare attended the NTA NEET UG 2026 exam translation and back translation related work of Botany and Zoology between March 9 and April 5," said the chargesheet.

Havaldar was found by the agency to note down the questions in brief after returning to her stay in Delhi at the end of the day's work.

CBI flagged a major oversight of the NTA which was a lack of a dedicated, live-feed monitoring control room for its confidential wing. According to the agency, this allowed the activities in the confidential wing to proceed without interruption and was compounded by the issue of CCTV footage of only 20-25 days being recorded and maintained by the NTA.

"Since confidential section-related work of the NEET UG 2026 exam was completed on April 7 and the instant case was registered on May 12, no CCTV footage of the relevant period was available for investigation purposes.”

"Further, there was no dedicated CCTV live feed monitoring control room in NTA. As a result, the activities of the experts in the confidential hall went unnoticed," alleges the CBI.