The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) made first breakthrough on Thursday, with the arrest of two persons from Patna in the NEET-UG exam scandal.

CBI sources confirmed that Manish Prakash and Ashutosh Kumar have been arrested and taken on remand from the local court for further interrogation to unearth larger conspiracy to compromise the NEET-UG medical exam.

The agency sources stated that Manish Prakash and Ashutosh Kumar were involved in ferrying of gullible students to a school where they were shown the NEET-UG paper in advance so that they could memorise them.

On Monday, the CBI took over the NEET paper leak case on a request from the Bihar government as protests from students mounted pressure to crack whip against those involved in the scandal.

The agency has formed multiple teams to carry out country-wide investigation in the exam irregularities scandal.

The Maharashtra government on Thursday has also decided to hand over all the NEET exam cases to the CBI. However, the CBI sources said they are still to get any formal request from the state government for the probe.

Overall, the CBI is probing six different cases on the irregularities in the conduct of the NEET-UG medical exam. While one is the main case referred by the Ministry of Education, three each have come from Gujarat and Rajasthan, respectively.