ED raids against Al Falah University, linked persons in Red Fort blast case
New Delhi (PTI): The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday conducted simultaneous searches in Delhi-NCR against the trustees and promoters of Al Falah University of Faridabad, the varsity central to the Red Fort area car blast case, officials said.
Multiple teams of the federal probe agency raided at least 25 premises of the Al Falah trust and University establishment since 5:15 am, they said.
Teams of the agency raided an office location in Delhi's Okhla area with a security cordon being provided by the police and paramilitary forces.
Fifteen persons have been killed in the blast that took place on November 10 near the iconic monument in Delhi and the role of a number of doctors linked to the University and in Kashmir is under the scanner of the anti-terror probe agencies.
"The operation forms part of an ongoing investigation into financial irregularities, use of shell companies, accommodation entities and money laundering.The role of Al-Falah Trust and related entities is under investigation," an ED official said.
The official said "key" personnel overseeing finance and administration of the trust and the University have also been covered in the raids.
The agency has taken cognisance of the first information reports filed by the NIA and the Delhi Police in the case. Till now, the NIA has arrested two persons, stated to be the alleged close aides of "suicide bomber" Dr Umar Nabi.
At least nine shell (dummy) companies linked to the group, all registered at a single address, are under the examination of the ED, according to the officials.
Preliminary findings point to multiple "risk" indicators consistent with shell-company behaviour like no physical presence or meaningful utility consumption at declared places of business and common mobile number and email across various companies and accounts.
The ED investigators have also found absence of EPFO/ESIC filings inconsistent with reported scale of operations and overlapping of directors/signatories and weak KYC trails across entities.
Instances of minimal salary disbursal through banking channels and absence of HR (human resource) records part from synchronised incorporation patterns and common contact coordinates across firms have been detected at the varsity, the officials said.
In addition, prima facie discrepancies have been noted in claims regarding UGC and NAAC recognition which indicate alleged non-compliance to norms established for educational institutions, the officials said.
The Al Falah varsity is located in the Dhouj area of Haryana's Faridabad district, and it is a medical college-cum-hospital.
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NEET-UG: 2 more held, role of several NTA officers under scanner; CBI focussing on source of leak
New Delhi (PTI): The CBI has arrested two more persons in connection with the NEET (UG) paper-leak case, with the role of several officers of the National Testing Agency (NTA) and other organisations, who had access to the printing press where the papers were printed, coming under the scanner, officials said on Thursday.
The agency has arrested Dhananjay Lokhanda from Ahilyanagar and Manisha Waghmare from Pune and conducted searches at 14 locations across the country in the last 24 hours, they said.
The CBI is focussing on identifying the source of the leak that has caused massive disappointment to lakhs of aspirants eyeing a seat in undergraduate medical courses, which are allotted after the highly-competitive examination, the officials said.
According to the CBI probe so far, the involvement of public servants in the leak cannot be ruled out.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested three individuals from Jaipur -- Mangilal Biwal, Vikas Biwal and Dinesh Biwal -- along with Yash Yadav from Gurugram and Shubham Khairnar from Nashik.
Khairnar was in touch with Yadav and informed him in April that Mangilal Biwal was ready to pay Rs 10-12 lakh for arranging leaked NEET (UG) 2026 questions for his younger son.
Khairnar allegedly provided 500 to 600 questions from the leaked paper to Yadav, the officials said, adding that the questions could have helped score enough marks to get a seat in a reputed medical college.
Mangilal Biwal allegedly procured the paper from Yadav, who was known to his elder son Vikas Biwal from an NEET coaching in Rajasthan's Sikar. The deal between Mangilal Biwal and Yadav was for Rs 10 lakh, if 150 questions from the question bank matched with those in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) paper, the officials said.
Mangilal Biwal shared the paper with his son and further distributed it among relatives.
Yadav also told Vikas Biwal to find additional candidates for the questions to recover some of the money that he had spent on getting those, the officials said.
An analysis of digital devices has given the agency incriminating chats, leaked question papers and other digital evidence. The CBI will subject the devices to a forensic examination to get the deleted data, the officials said.
The federal agency has registered an FIR and formed teams to probe the alleged NEET (UG) paper leak that resulted in the cancellation of the exam held on May 3.
The NEET (UG) 2026 was conducted across 551 Indian cities and at 14 overseas centres. Nearly 23 lakh candidates had registered for the test, which was administered by the NTA at centres across the country.
According to the NTA, information regarding alleged malpractice was received on the evening of May 7, four days after the examination was held. The NTA said the inputs were escalated to central agencies the following morning for "independent verification and necessary action".
The Rajasthan Police's Special Operations Group (SOG) has claimed that a "guess paper" for chemistry, allegedly circulated among students ahead of the examination, had approximately 410 questions, including roughly 120 that appeared in the test.
