Paper leaks, hooch deaths made 2024 a sordid saga

In a first, three persons from the third gender have made it to the list of 1,275 sub-inspectors to be recruited into the Bihar Police following an examination conducted by BPS

- Avinash Kumar

PATNA: The recovery of a half burnt and wet question paper of NEET UG-2024 from a private school in the state capital gave Patna police the vital clue about the leak of NEET question paper and later set the platform for the probe first by the Economic Offence Unit (EOU), and then by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to find the culprits of this high-profile exam leak case.

The central agency has so far arrested 46 persons from Bihar, Jharkhand and other parts of the country, including government employees, private school principal, vice-principal, examination mafias, MBBS students from AIIMS and RIMS.

Most of the accused have also been chargesheeted in this case.

With NEET taint on their foreheads, the year 2024 turned out to be a bigger test for the examiner bodies all through the year, and finally, when the year came to an end, a row erupted over the BPSC's 70th CCE. Furore led to the cancellation of the exam at a prominent centre in Patna, and students are staging a strike to end the whole exam and have a re-exam ordered. Till the time of writing this piece, the state administration was trying to strike a compromise with the students, and no solution was in sight.

This year BPSC TRE-3 paper also leaked in Bihar and till date 285 persons, including aspirants and mafias, have been arrested. Recently, the CHOs exam was cancelled due to alleged malpractices in the exam. The exam was later cancelled while EOU nabbed 36 persons.