At 11 pm on May 2, an MBBS student from Rajasthan’s Sikar studying in Kerala sent a “guess paper” to his father who runs a hostel for coaching students in Sikar. It was just a few hours to go for the NEET exam of May 3. Little did the father and son know that they had unwittingly stumbled on a NEET exam paper leak, which would have dramatic consequences – cancellation of the entire exam and a Central Bureau of Investigation takeover of the case that now seems to span several states.
Sources in the Special Operations Group said the Kerala student had got the “guess paper” in PDF format from a friend in Sikar. Since he was already studying medicine, he did not need the “guess paper”. He sent it to his father who runs a hostel in Sikar for coaching centre students. He knew his father slept early, but he dropped a message saying in case anyone in the hostel is sitting for NEET, this paper could be helpful.
Read: NEET UG 2026 Cancelled: No Re-Registration Needed, NTA To Announce Fresh Exam Date
In the morning, his father went to offer the paper to four girls who were taking the exam. But they had already left for the examination centre. Out of curiosity, he also shared the “guess paper” with a chemistry teacher he knew.
The teacher compared it with the NEET paper and found that of the 108 questions, 45 were exact copies. The chemistry teacher then asked a colleague in biology and to their amazement they found that of the 204 questions, 90 matched.
The “guess paper” had an amazing strike rate — 135 questions had matched originals. The hostel owner and the chemistry teacher then decided to approach the local police.
To their astonishment, the Sikar police refused to lodge a case or investigate the matter. They dismissed the matter on the grounds that if the two wanted to lodge a case after the exam was over, then their intentions could be questionable. Maybe they wanted to have the exam cancelled, the police reasoned.
Sources in the SOG told NDTV that the Sikar police thought that if it was a case of paper leak, the men should have complained before the exam and not after.
But not willing to let the matter rest, the hostel owner and the teacher sent an email to the National Testing Agency or the NTA. That was when they were taken seriously, but four days had already passed since the exam. The NTA wrote to the Intelligence Bureau and on May 8, asked the Rajasthan Special Operations Group to investigate the case.
Sources in the SOG told NDTV that the phone and WhatsApp details of the hostel owner have confirmed the sequence of events.
Read: NEET Paper Leak: When Incompetence Becomes The System
As the SOG moved in, the investigations in Sikar opened up a can of worms. It is difficult to guess how far the leaked paper had spread in Sikar and this will now be probed by the CBI, sources said.
The SOG, for reasons of security, has decided not to reveal the identity of the hostel owner, his son and the chemistry teacher who stumbled upon this case by chance.
Another interesting lead was to Jamwaramgarh in the outskirts of Jaipur, where two brothers had sold the paper to a contact in Sikar. During questioning by the police, they spilled the beans and led the SOG to a contact in Haryana who had provided them the paper.
This person is believed to be a first-year student of Ayurvedic medicine in Haryana. He allegedly sold the paper for large sums of money to NEET aspirants in Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
From here, the investigation led to Maharashtra. The Ayurveda student had reportedly got the paper from a student in Nashik — Shubham Khairnar – who, the police said, was found with a physical copy of the “guess paper”.
On Tuesday, the National Testing Agency cancelled the NEET UG 2026 exam. The exam will now be conducted again on revised dates, which will be notified separately. The candidates will not need to re-register or pay any additional fee, the NTA said. All existing applications will remain valid.