CBI registers case against AIIMS paper leak, HC informed

New Delhi: The CBI told the Delhi High Court that it has registered a case of the alleged leak of question paper for the AIIMS MBBS entrance examination this year, from an institute in Ghaziabad.

The submission was made before a before a bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar, which was hearing a PIL seeking a court-monitored probe into the alleged illegalities and irregularities during the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) MBBS entrance exam held on May 28 this year.

The agency, in its reply, said that “specific questions in the leaked screen shots were used in SET-3 of shift-2 at exam center - HR Institute of Technology, Morta, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh”.

“It has also been found that the specific combination and sequence of the questions were randomly and uniquely allocated to a particular candidate,” the affidavit, filed through CBI Special Public Prosecutor Rajdipa Behura, said.

It also said that searches were conducted at the house of a student, the exam centre, and its officials. During the course of the investigation, documents and digital evidence were seized, it added.

“A regular case was registered on June 13,” the agency said, adding that the “investigation of the case is at the initial stage, five witnesses have been examined and eight documents have been seized so far”.

The court listed the matter for further hearing on September 13 by when the Centre and AIIMS have to file their replies.

The CBI was responding to the plea of doctor Anand Rai, who claims to be a whistleblower in the Vyapam scam case, seeking directions to AIIMS to quash the result declared on June 15 for the MBBS exam held on May 28.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioner, has submitted that the results be only quashed if the probe “reveals that the entrance examination has been entirely and irreversibly vitiated.”

The petition sought direction to AIIMS to produce before the court the finding of the institute’s committee which was constituted for conducting an inquiry into the complaints regarding the conduct of the examination.

Rai had on May 31 alleged that the question papers of this year’s entrance exam for MBBS course of the AIIMS were leaked.

He had, in a series of tweets, posted images of question papers of the entrance examination which were held across the country on May 28 and said he had received the snapshots from a source who claimed these were leaked from a college in Lucknow when the online test was going on. Rai had also alleged that AIIMS MBBS seats were being “sold”.