The National Testing Agency (NTA) has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to determine whether Physics questions from the NEET-UG 2026 examination were also leaked, as investigators have not ruled out that the circulated guess papers may have drawn from NTA’s confidential backup question paper set.
NTA conducted NEET-UG on May 3, with over 2.27 million candidates attempting 180 questions — 45 each from Physics and Chemistry and 90 from Biology, using pen and paper to take the test. It received no complaints specifically about Physics, cancelled the examination on May 12 after finding at least 120 questions in the leaked material overlapped with the actual test, and has scheduled a re-examination on June 21.
The CBI has made 10 arrests, including Shivraj Raghunath Motegaonkar, founder of a Latur-based coaching centre; PV Kulkarni, a retired Pune-based Chemistry lecturer; and Manisha Gurunath Mandhare, a Pune-based Botany teacher — both Kulkarni and Mandhare having been part of NTA’s NEET-UG 2026 expert panel.
Investigators have established that nearly all 90 Biology questions and all 45 Chemistry questions of the May 3 paper were circulated as guess papers at least a week before the examination. An independent analysis of the leaked PDFs by HT confirmed the extent of the overlap.
