Sanjeev Kumar ‘Mukhiya,’ aged 51, is the leader of an interstate network known as the ‘Solver Gang,’ which is accused of selling solved question papers of competitive exams to paying clients.
Mukhiya is believed to have been involved in at least five major paper leak cases, including the Bihar teachers’ recruitment exam, for which his son, Dr Shiv alias Bitu, was arrested earlier this year.
A resident of Nalanda, Mukhiya is currently on the run but has filed for anticipatory bail in a local court.
Mukhiya earned the nickname “Mukhiya” because his wife served as the village head of Nalanda’s Bhutahakhar panchayat from 2016 to 2021. He has allegedly been involved in paper leak rackets for over two decades, starting as an aide to Ranjeet Don, who was notorious for exam rackets in the 1990s and early 2000s, before eventually branching out on his own.
According to a report, Mukhiya has been a technical assistant at Udyan Vidyalaya in Nalanda’s Noorsarai for over ten years and has been named in at least four paper leak cases both inside and outside Bihar.
He has been arrested twice: once for a block-level examination in Bihar about a decade ago and again in 2016 for a suspected paper leak in Uttarakhand’s constable recruitment exam.
Mukhiya’s son, Shiv, a doctor, was arrested earlier this year for alleged irregularities in Bihar’s Teacher Recruitment Exam-III. Although Mukhiya was also accused of involvement in this case, he was not arrested.
Investigators revealed that Mukhiya’s close aide, Baldev Kumar, received a PDF of the solved question paper on the morning of May 5, the day of the exam. Candidates were allegedly made to memorise this solved answer key. Baldev is one of the five alleged ‘Solver Gang’ members arrested in the case from Jharkhand’s Deoghar.
Just before the 2020 assembly elections, Mukhiya’s wife, Mamata Devi, a former member of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), left the party and contested the election from Nalanda’s Harnaut as a candidate of the Lok Janshakti Party, but lost to JD(U)’s Hari Narayan Singh.
On Monday, the Opposition party Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) released photos of Mamata Devi with leaders of the JD(U) and other National Democratic Alliance parties. Neither the JD(U) nor Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) has commented on this yet.
RJD national spokesperson Manoj K Jha stated that the party released the photos “to highlight the gravity of the matter.” He added, “The scam, involving multiple states and raising questions about the NTA, needs thorough investigation.”
