Uttar Pradesh: Man held for raping, killing 3-yr-old girl
Lakhimpur Kheri: A man accused of raping and killing a three-year-old girl in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur Kheri was arrested after an encounter with police on Friday, officials said.
Main accused Lekhram sustained a bullet injury in his leg during the gunfight near Bamhanpur village in Nighasan area. He was rushed to Nighasan health centre, where he is undergoing treatment.
"His condition is stated to be stable," the official said.
Deputy SP Nighasan Pradeep Kumar Verma, who was in the native village of the girl, confirmed the arrest.
The girl's body, which bore injury marks on the head, was recovered from the vicinity of her village in Singahi area on Thursday after she went missing on Wednesday, police said.
This was the third such incident in the district in as many weeks.
"The postmortem report has confirmed rape. I am with family members right now. Seven of our teams are working on the case. I am myself going for combing in sugarcane fields and strict action will be taken against the accused," Superintendent of Police, Satyendra Kumar Singh earlier told PTI over phone.
"If needed, NSA will also be invoked against the accused," he said.
The girl died due to strangulation, the postmortem report said.
In his complaint to police, the girl's father had alleged that Lekhram, a resident of their village, had abducted and killed the child due to an old enmity with his family.
A case of murder was lodged against the accused.
Lakhimpur Kheri district was in the news recently when a 17-year-old Dalit girl was found dead outside her village.
She was allegedly raped and murdered after she left home to fill a scholarship application. Her mutilated body was found near a dry pond, around 200 metres away from her village falling under the Neemgaon police limits.
Prior to this incident, a 13-year-old girl was raped and killed in the district.
Police said the girl had gone to her fields in the afternoon and when she did not return home, her family started looking for her. She was found dead in a sugarcane field.
Both incidents drew flak from the opposition, with Congress and SP leaders attacking the Yogi Adityanath-led state government over the law and order situation.
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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.
