Continued from P1

The NTA referred to the directions issued as “a measure of last resort, taken only after intermediate remedies, including the take-down action coordinated by I4C, had been pursued and had not produced, at the platform level, the response required to protect candidates in the run-up to the examination.”

Channels on Telegram have been operating under names like- “PAPER LEAKED NEET”, “Re-NEET 2026”, “Private Mafia”, “REE NEET MAFIAA” — and have “demanded sums ranging from a few thousand to several lakhs of rupees from candidates and their families, in exchange for purported access to the re-examination paper”, the NTA statement said, adding that these sort of promises are “in every instance, a fraud”. Channels operating under self-descriptive names openly solicited desperate students and their families, demanding sums ranging from a few thousand to several lakh rupees in exchange for purported access to the re-examination question paper.

NTA has categorically stated that no such paper exists outside the secured examination chain, and that every such promise is, without exception, a fraud designed to extort money from anxious aspirants.

The modus operandi, as documented by NTA, works as follows: a channel administrator posts an innocuous message before the exam. After the exam is conducted and the actual question paper becomes publicly available, the administrator edits that old message to insert the real question paper — crucially, while retaining the original timestamp. The fabricated chat is then circulated virally as “proof” that the paper was leaked before the exam, causing public panic and undermining the credibility of the examination process.