When Shivraj Raghunath Motegaonkar – better known to his 68,000 Instagram followers as “M Sir” – was publicly calling out exam corruption after the 2024 NEET scandal, he came across as every medical aspirant’s hero. A small-town chemistry teacher who had built something real. A man who spoke truth to power.
On Sunday, May 17, 2026, CBI officers knocked on his door and found the NEET 2026 question paper saved on his mobile phone.
He was arrested. The hero, it turned out, was allegedly running the fraud.
From 10 Students to 40,000 – and a ₹1,500 Crore Network
Motegaonkar is the founder of one of Maharashtra’s largest NEET and JEE coaching networks, built over 25 years from a small village in Latur district. According to the Dainik Bhaskar report, he started around 1999-2000 with just 10 students and a tiny shop in Latur, naming his venture “ARC Classes.” Over two and a half decades, it grew into the Renukai Career Centre (RCC), with nine branches spread across the state, the main one headquartered in Latur, Maharashtra.
The network reportedly spans eight districts – Latur, Nanded, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Pune, Akola, Nashik, and Solapur among them – with over 40,000 active students and assets locally estimated at ₹1,500 crore. It is the kind of success story that gets featured in regional newspapers, that politicians cite as inspiration, and that parents across Maharashtra point to when they send their children to Latur hoping for a miracle.
Follow TJP Whatsapp ChannelSome of those miracles, investigators now allege, were manufactured.
The Question Paper That Arrived Ten Days Early
The CBI says Motegaonkar obtained the NEET UG 2026 question paper along with its answers on April 23 – a full ten days before the exam was held on May 4. He did not stumble upon it. According to the agency, he was an “active member of the organised gang” behind the leak, working in collusion with other accused to obtain and distribute the paper.
Investigators recovered the leaked question paper directly from his mobile phone during a raid at his premises. It was the kind of evidence that leaves little room for doubt.
This became the 10th arrest in the NEET UG 2026 paper leak case. But what makes this particular arrest land differently is what came before it, and what is now unravelling.
Last Year Too: 19 AIIMS Selections and Suspicious Patterns
The CBI’s suspicions do not stop at 2026. Investigators believe Motegaonkar’s alleged links to paper leak networks go back to NEET 2025 as well. That year, RCC students recorded unusually high scores, with 19 students securing admission to AIIMS institutes across the country, two at AIIMS Delhi, five at AIIMS Hyderabad, and three each at AIIMS Bhopal and Varanasi.
The newspaper reports that in the final 15 days before each exam, selected students were enrolled in what was called a “one-on-one mentoring course.” CBI believes this was the channel, the last-mile delivery mechanism, for distributing leaked papers to paying students.
Students from Nagpur, Deoghar, Gorakhpur, Rajkot, Raipur, and Mangalagiri were reportedly reached through this network. Investigators suspect that over 1,000 students may have purchased the leaked question paper in 2026 alone.
The Network Behind the Network
No leak this organised runs on one person. The CBI probe has peeled back several layers.
A Pune-based Botany professor, Manisha Gurunath Mandhare, appointed by the NTA as a subject expert, was arrested in Delhi. Investigators allege she had complete access to the Botany and Zoology question pools connected to the NEET 2026 paper-setting process.
She allegedly guided students and shared answers at a meeting arranged at the home of Manisha Waghmare, a beauty parlour owner from Bibwewadi, Pune, who has also since been arrested.
Connecting Motegaonkar to the source was Prof. P.V. Kulkarni, a Chemistry lecturer from Latur with ties to the NTA, who the CBI had questioned earlier and has now arrested. In total, 11 people have been arrested in the case so far.
Courts, Custody, and a Sealed Coaching Centre
A special court granted the CBI nine days of custody of Motegaonkar, to identify co-accused, recover digital evidence, and trace the financial transactions behind the leak operation.
The Pune Municipal Corporation has sealed his coaching institute’s premises. The district administration in Latur has also launched a broader crackdown on coaching centres operating illegally in the city’s notorious coaching hub.
The man who built a ₹1,500 crore empire teaching chemistry is now in CBI custody, with investigators untangling just how many students paid for answers instead of earning them.
Why It Matters
India’s NEET system was designed as a great equaliser , one exam, one standard, equal access to medicine. What the CBI is uncovering is a parallel system where access was bought, not earned, and where the sellers had infiltrated the very machinery meant to ensure fairness.
For every student who got in through an RCC “mentoring session,” there was a student who studied for years and didn’t. That student has no name in this story. But they are the reason it matters.
The NEET UG 2026 re-examination is currently scheduled for June 21, 2026.
