Patna: Special Investigation Team officers probing the Maharashtra Teacher Eligibility Test 2026 paper leak case have arrested alleged kingpin Vijayendrakumar Gupta and his associate Indrajit Singh from Bihar. Thane Police announced the arrests on Saturday, bringing the total number of individuals apprehended in connection with the inter-state syndicate to fourteen.
Deputy Commissioner of Police for Bhiwandi Zone-II, Pawan Bansode, confirmed that the SIT had been tracking Gupta, also known as Bijendra Kumar Gupta, for several weeks after his name emerged as the chief coordinator of the operation. Law enforcement officials brought both suspects from Bihar to Pune on Saturday before transferring them to Bhiwandi, where they will appear before a local court to secure police custody for further interrogation.
The multi-state network was uncovered on June 27 when Bhiwandi police conducted a targeted raid based on confidential intelligence, seizing unauthorized physical copies of question papers. Officials from the Maharashtra State Council of Examination subsequently verified that the confiscated materials matched the official question paper prepared for the TET examination scheduled for June 28 across 1,028 examination centres state-wide. The state government immediately postponed the exam, lodged a formal case at Bhiwandi police station, and formed the SIT to dismantle the network.
Gupta and Singh join a growing list of suspects in police custody, including Gupta’s wife Suman Kumari Gupta and employees of an Agra-based private printing press identified as Nareshkumar Mahore, Sanjaykumar Sharma, and Babulal Kushwaha. Other individuals previously arrested in the ongoing investigation include Rajiv Shaw, Akash Kumar, Dheeraj Singh, Sonu Singh, Mithun Singh, and Kapil Dahiya.
