The NEET-UG whistleblower who reached Sikar police station in the dead of night

New Delhi,UPDATED: May 14, 2026 15:22 IST

In the dead of night of May 4 at around 1.30 am, some hours after over 22 lakh students finished writing the NEET-UG 2026 on May 3, a man reached Udyog Nagar police station of Rajasthan's Sikar district with what he claimed was the proof of a paper leak. He approached the police with a handwritten "guess paper", questions from which strangely matched those asked in the NEET-UG 2026 exam. But no police complaint was filed at the police station that night, and it took the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducted the all-India medical entrance test, to wake up to the paper leak and cancel the exam held on May 3.

The handwritten pages the whistleblower was carrying that night were to expose the scam. It was he who finally wrote to the NTA with the evidence.

The NTA, which is tasked with conducting a foolproof exam, acted. It announced the cancellation of the pan-India test. And the hopes and dreams of over 2 million students were shattered on May 11, which is eight days after the National-Eligibility-cum-Entrance-Test Undergraduate (NEET-UG) examination.

India Today Digital spoke to Rajesh Kumar, the Station House Officer (SHO) of Sikar's Udyog Nagar Police Station. SHO Kumar said that the man came to the police station at around 1.30 am on May 4 but didn't give a written complaint to the on-duty police officer.

The question paper leak was first spotted by the person, who is said to be a teacher with a prominent coaching centre in Sikar. Coaching centres for NEET and JEE have mushroomed in Sikar, which is now being termed "mini Kota". The coaching ecosystem in Sikar has a murky past, being allegedly linked to several scams in the past.

"It was late at night, and I was not present at the police station at that time. As per procedure, the officer on duty handed him a blank sheet of paper and asked him to write down his complaint along with his name, number, whereabouts, and ID details. But he left. He never came back and never submitted anything in writing," SHO Rajesh Kumar told India Today Digital.

WHISTLEBLOWER RECEIVED GUESS PAPERS THAT WERE SENT FROM KERALA

According to a report in The Indian Express, the whistleblower is a teacher, and received the handwritten guess papers from his landlord in Sikar. The landlord asked him whether the questions in the guess paper and the NEET question paper matched.

The landlord had accessed the papers from his son, who stays in Kerala, the report added.

The whistleblower tallied the questions in the guess paper with those in the NEET-UG question paper and found that questions totalling to 600 marks matched. The NEET-UG exam is of 720 marks. A student who gets over 650 has a high chance of being eligible to study at a good government medical college.

He understood what had transpired. And rushed to the police station with the evidence of the paper leak.

OVER 80% QUESTIONS IN NEET MATCHED WITH THE GUESS PAPER

The initial probe into the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak by the Rajasthan's Special Operations Group (SOG) revealed that nearly 90 Biology questions and 45 Chemistry questions in the NEET paper were found in the guess paper as well, reported India Today TV's Sharat Kumar. These questions in the guess paper accounted for 600 marks out of the total 720 of the NEET exam.

SHO Kumar told India Today Digital that the Sikar police wasn't probing the case as it was now with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Recognising the multi-state nature of the paper-leak scam, the Union Ministry of Education transferred the investigations to the CBI.

Investigators of the Rajasthan SOG, which was initially probing the case, told India Today TV's Sharat Kumar that nearly 90 Biology questions and all 45 Chemistry questions in the NEET-UG 2026 exam matched with those in the guess paper.

WHISTLEBLOWER GAVE NOTHING IN WRITING, SAYS SIKAR POLICE

The whistleblower approached the police station with a stack of guess papers and claimed that the NEET-UG question papers were leaked. As the SHO was not in the station, the duty officer asked the whistleblower to submit a written complaint.

The reason Sikar police couldn't act, SHO Kumar told India Today Digital, was because the whistleblower "gave nothing in writing" and "left abruptly".

When asked why the officer on duty did not ask for the whistleblower's details to follow up, Kumar said, "The duty officer expected that once the man returned with a written complaint, all details would become clear and action could be initiated."

"What value does an oral complaint have? The whistleblower never gave anything in writing," he argued.

India Today Digital tried to verify the details of the whistleblower, who was reportedly a teacher in a coaching centre in Sikar. SHO Kumar said, "We do not know anything about the whistleblower."

WHISTLEBLOWER APPROACHED NTA AFTER 4 DAYS OF NEET-UG EXAM

The whistleblower must have been debating the way forward as he sent his complaint to the NTA on May 7. That was three days after he approached the Rajasthan Police.

In the complaint to the NTA, the whistleblower stated that the material was a nearly 60-page PDF file containing handwritten chemistry questions along with several pages of biology questions that closely resembled the NEET paper, The Indian Express reported.

"I am willing to submit my mobile for forensic investigation and have full proof, considering the magnitude and importance of the NEET examination and the impact that such acts may have on the lives of the students, the whistleblower wrote in the complaint accessed by The Indian Express. He sought that the case be investigated by an independent agency, stating that the circumstances highlighted "unlawful access, circulation and transmission" of the NEET-UG question paper.

In an interview with India Today TV on May 12, NTA Director General Abhishek Singh confirmed that the allegations were probed internally and found to be true. "We decided to cancel the examination on May 11 after the internal probe confirmed that the complaint received by the NTA on May 7 regarding the paper leak was genuine," Singh said.

While the whistle-blower first went to Udyog Nagar thana of Sikar, his not writing a formal complaint didn't allow the police to initiate a probe into the matter. "How could we have started a probe without a written complaint," asked SHO Kumar. "The whistleblower left abruptly, and now we are being blamed for driving him away," he told India Today Digital.

SHO Kumar has 'Teri Mitti Me Mil Jawa', the patriotic song from Akshay Kumar-starrer Kesari (2019), as his ringtone.

It was the whistleblower's letter that eventually prompted the NTA to alert central agencies, leading to investigations by Rajasthan's SOG and later the CBI. He tried to act fast, but the police process might have frustrated him and delayed the probe by days.

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With inputs from Sushim Mukul and Sharat Kumar