Summary of this article
Police suspect the NEET-UG 2026 paper was leaked from a Nashik printing press and routed to Gurugram.
Nashik police arrested a BAMS student accused of buying and reselling the paper through courier channels.
Investigators believe the leaked paper was used to prepare a “guess paper” containing around 120 actual NEET questions.
A physical copy of the NEET-UG paper was allegedly leaked from a printing press in Nashik and brought to a doctor in Gurugram, police sources said on Tuesday, adding that this was still a subject of a probe.
When questioned about this, Dr. Rajesh Kataria, president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) in Gurugram, stated that although there were reports that a "doctor from Gurugram" was involved, no investigating agency had yet to formally get in touch with the local medical body.
According to a senior police official, the leaked paper was allegedly received by a doctor in Gurugram, although the matter is still under investigation.
Due to reports of a paper leak, the NEET (UG) 2026 exam scheduled for May 3 was cancelled on Tuesday. The CBI filed a formal complaint after the government requested that it conduct a thorough investigation into the "irregularities."
New dates will be announced in the "next seven to 10 days," according to the National Testing Agency (NTA), which administers the exam for admission to undergraduate courses in medical universities.
Medical candidates nationwide were incensed by the cancellation, questioning NTA's competency and calling for AIIMS-Delhi to administer the test instead.
Shubham Khairnar, a third-year BAMS student from Nashik who allegedly purchased the NEET-UG 2026 question paper for ₹10 lakh and then sold it to a person in Gurugram for ₹15 lakh—both transactions carried out by courier—is at the centre of a paper leak investigation. Nashik police detained Khairnar on Tuesday. They believe the question paper was used to prepare a handwritten guess paper of 410 questions with answers within a larger question bank.
Shubham Khairnar, a Nashik native studying in Bhopal, was taken into custody by Nashik police on Tuesday.
Investigators believe the question paper, after reaching Gurugram, was used to prepare a handwritten guess paper of 410 questions with answers, camouflaging 120 questions drawn from the original NEET paper — which tests biology and chemistry among other subjects, with 150 questions from those two alone — within a larger question bank.
