NEET-UG Exam Case: ‘Godhra School Chairman Took Rs 10 Lakh Each for Allowing Students to Cheat’

After Anand’s arrest, CBI transported the education trust head 86 km to Godhra.

VADODARA: On Sunday, the chairman of a well-known private school in Godhra, Gujarat, was arrested in connection with the NEET-UG cheating scandal being investigated by the CBI. This makes him the sixth person arrested in the state and the fourth individual associated with an educational institution, following the arrests of the school’s principal, a teacher, and an academic consultant. Dixit Patel, who leads the Jay Jalaram Education Trust, is accused of demanding Rs 10 lakh from each medical aspirant in exchange for helping them cheat on the NEET-UG exam.

Jay Jalaram School was one of the designated NEET-UG centers in Panchmahal for the May 5 exam, similar to Oasis School in Hazaribag, whose principal and vice-principal are also in CBI custody. A CBI team arrested Dixit Patel in Anand and drove him 86 km to Godhra, where he was presented in court with a request for remand. The magistrate directed the agency to seek his remand from the special CBI court in Ahmedabad.

Dixit’s arrest follows the CBI’s recent custody of four individuals initially detained by the police. A CBI team has been stationed in Gujarat to piece together the details of the NEET-UG paper leak investigation, which began in Bihar and Jharkhand and has since revealed evidence of a larger conspiracy involving paper leak networks across multiple states, including Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

The Godhra case was registered on May 8, three days after the exam, based on information that five individuals had assisted 27 medical aspirants in cheating. All five were charged with criminal conspiracy, cheating, and criminal breach of trust under various sections of the IPC. The arrested suspects include Vadodara-based education consultant Parshuram Roy, Jay Jalaram School principal Purushottam Sharma, teacher Tushar Bhatt, and alleged middlemen Vibhor Anand and Arif Vohra.

On June 23, the CBI filed a new FIR in the case under IPC sections 120B and 420, among others, as protests erupted nationwide. The CBI has taken over five cases of alleged malpractice in NEET-UG that were previously being investigated by police in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Bihar.