THE PAPER LEAK MAFIA ROAMED FREELY

THE PAPER LEAK MAFIA ROAMED FREELY

14-DEC-ENG 21

RAJIV NAYAN AGRAWAL

PATNA----------------------------For 21 months, the police of Bihar and 6 other states were searching for him. Meanwhile, he was contesting elections from Barbigha, just 110 kilometers from Patna. He was participating in the rallies of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, but the police couldn't spot him.

The Economic Offences Unit (EOU) arrested examination mafia Sanjay Prabhat from Patna, who was preparing to rig the Bihar Police driver's examination. This arrest is particularly surprising because Bihar's biggest examination mafia, Sanjeev Mukhiya, had given clues about him months ago. Sanjay Prabhat was wanted by the police of Bihar and 6 other states for the past 21 months.

After Sanjay's arrest, the police of 4 states, including Delhi Police, Madhya Pradesh Police, Uttarakhand Police, and Telangana Police, have contacted the EOU, as they also want to interrogate him. Sanjay has been arrested twice before: in 2016, Hyderabad Police arrested him for rigging the Telangana State recruitment examination, and in the same year, Uttarakhand Police arrested him in Nainital while he was making students memorize the AIPMT (Medical Entrance) paper. The EOU is now preparing to take him on remand to interrogate him in various cases and completely dismantle his illegal network.

In the initial interrogation by the EOU, Sanjay Prabhat revealed that his biggest dream is to become an MLA. He said that contesting elections requires huge expenses, and such money can only be earned through illegal businesses like paper leaks. He started the paper leak business to fulfill this political ambition.

During his time on the run, Sanjay Prabhat was also contesting the assembly elections as an independent candidate from Barbigha, just 110 kilometers from Patna. Most surprisingly, he was actively participating in the political rallies of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, yet the police had no idea. During this period, he contested the election from Barbigha and received 1446 votes.

Sanjay Prabhat started his political career with the RJD in 2004 and remained active in the party for almost 20 years, making Nawada his base. In the 2005 assembly elections, he contested from Govindpur in Nawada on an RJD ticket and came in second. Later, he joined the Congress party and was active in Sheikhpura district. He used Nawada as his base for politics, while Patna served as his base for crimes like exam rigging.

Sanjay Prabhat's father, Ramlakhan Yadav, is a teacher by profession and supported his four children through this profession. Sanjay completed his intermediate education in the village and then moved to Patna. Two of his brothers are farmers in the village, while the third is a doctor in Sheikhpura. Sanjay rarely visited the village. His influence in competitive exams was so deep that, according to one participant, he would directly deliver the exam papers to the participant's home so they could solve them at home.

According to the villagers, Sanjay Prabhat's family is a middle-class family with 3-4 bighas of ancestral land. However, in the affidavit submitted for the 2025 assembly elections, he declared himself a businessman and declared movable and immovable assets worth Rs. 14 crore in his wife's name. The EOU has also found that Sanjay was not only involved in exam rigging but was also connected to an illegal mining network in Nawada, in collaboration with a powerful local strongman.