Coaching classes fear NEET & mock test similarities may land students in trouble

Nagpur: As news of raids by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Nagpur and Chandrapur connected to the NEET ‘paper leak' spread across the city, coaching classes, parents and students became anxious, with some fearing that some "coincidence" might land them in trouble.

The worries were related to ‘practice papers' or ‘mock tests' that students take as part of their gruelling study sessions, as similarity to the original NEET question paper would mean anybody could be on the central investigating agency's radar.





It was this ‘similarity' between mock test papers and the original NEET questions that led CBI to a coaching class owner from Marathwada. The academic is currently in CBI custody, and social media is flooded with an undated video of the coaching class owner in which he is interviewing his students, asking them how their NEET exams went. Students in that video claimed that many of the questions that they solved as part of the practice test appeared in the original question paper.

This video is the reason why some coaching institutes are worried that they might, by a freak coincidence, be at the end of a digital trail that CBI is tracking.

Owner of a coaching class in Nagpur, said on condition of anonymity, "Many of the students are not only part of the classroom coaching but also appear in test series at different places through online mode. They are part of multiple WhatsApp groups where study material and mock tests are shared. So, it is very likely that mock tests from outside our ecosystem make it to our WhatsApp groups and students can get into trouble. In Nagpur, coaching classes operate above board, but students unknowingly might get into trouble."

The coaching class owner helped TOI get in touch with a parent who was worried after hearing about the NEET paper leak. "Though there is nothing to fear, anxiety is still there because we are hearing on social media that many students are being called for questioning just because they received some WhatsApp message with mock papers. Kids who are studying for NEET receive dozens upon dozens of such mock test PDFs; how will they know which one is a leaked paper?" said the parent.