- Behind the arrests in Rajasthan lies a much larger network in the state
- One of the key figures in this network is Rakesh Mandawariya, who runs a career guidance cell in Sikar
- The other is Satyanarayan Chaudhary, a chemistry teacher, who ran a career institute for a few months
The CBI has arrested three people from Rajasthan for the NEET 2026 leak. The three men are key suspects who bought a 'guess' paper closely resembling the question paper for the medical exam and sold it to coaching hubs in Sikar, from where it was widely circulated. All three belong to the same family - brothers Dinesh and Mangilal Biwal, and Mangilal's eldest son, Vikas.
But behind these key arrests lies a much larger network in the state. People who were questioned and detained and are still on the radar of the investigating agencies - an invisible network that possibly holds the clues to what has been one of the biggest paper leak scandals in the country, affecting the future of over 23 lakh students.
One of the key figures in this network is Rakesh Kumar Mandawariya, who runs a career guidance cell called RK Consultancy on Sikar's Piprali Road. A paper solver, consultant to students appearing for medical entrance exams and an alumnus of Navodaya Vidyalaya, Mandawariya, or 'Rakesh Sir' as he is better known, ran his operations from an office the size of a small shop.
Its shutters are down, but the air conditioning was left on - a sign that after the investigating agencies began closing in on the dramatis personae of the NEET exam paper leak, Mandawariya and the staff either left hurriedly or were picked up by the police.
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Sources told NDTV Mandawariya bought the paper from the Biwal brothers for Rs 15 lakh and circulated it among students and coaching institutes for as much as Rs 3-5 lakh each. As soon as the leak came to light, Rakesh Sir went missing and was later picked up from Uttarakhand. His staff was detained from the shop in Sikar and their computers and electronic devices were seized by the Rajasthan Police.
Between April 30 and May 2, a day before the NEET exam on May 3, the 'guess' paper began circulating in Sikar. While Mandawariya was selling the paper for lakhs, some aspirants who bought it are believed to have shared it for as little as Rs 15,000 or even for free the night before the exam. This included a man who shared it with his friend - an MBBS student from Sikar studying in Kerala - who then passed it on to his father, a hostel owner in Sikar. The hostel owner, the final link in this chain, blew the lid off the leak.
Since the Special Operations Group picked up Mandawariya and handed him over to the CBI, along with several others, he has not returned home. He has not been arrested by the central agency, but police sources say his role in the scam has been established and he could be behind bars soon.
The Institute That Wasn't
Another shadowy figure behind the NEET paper leak is Satyanarayan Chaudhary, a chemistry teacher who was known in Sikar as 'Bhai Sir'. Chaudhary allegedly ran a career institute called 'Deep Career Institute', which functioned only for a few months. But a poster by the institute congratulating students for success in last year's NEET featured photos of three students from the Biwal family.
The three students on the poster, Palak, Saniya and Gunjan Biwal are among five children from the Biwal family who have cleared NEET. Palak and Saniya are the daughters of Ghanshyam, who was the eldest Biwal sibling and is now dead, while Gunjan is the daughter of Dinesh Biwal, the main accused, and is reportedly studying in a medical college in Varanasi.
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Whether Bhai Sir's Deep Career Institute functioned successfully or was just a front for a larger paper leak network is now a matter of investigation, but his former neighbours say he then moved to Nagaur to work at a coaching institute there. They have told the police that Chaudhary would frame guess papers called 'The Master Stroke', which matched the questions in previous exams as well. These details are now being corroborated by investigating agencies and Chaudhary was picked up for questioning, but has been missing after the CBI left for Delhi with the three main accused.
'Key Cogs'
Police sources said nearly 150 people were questioned over the paper leak and about 40 were detained. Many of these were students, who were allowed to leave on the guarantee that they would come for questioning when required.
They emphasised that the mandate of the Rajasthan Police was to establish whether the paper leak had indeed happened, make an assessment of the scale, and then hand over the case to the CBI, which has been done.
"People like Mandawariya and Chaudhary are being investigated. As the probe progresses, these shadowy figures, and others like them, may emerge as the key cogs in the paper leak machine," said an official.