Hyderabad: Ahead of the NEET UG 2026 exam on June 21, Hyderabad Commissioner of Police VC Sajjanar on Thursday, June 18, urged aspirants and parents not to believe fake news regarding the exam.
He also warned of strict action against cyber criminals who play with students’ futures and deceive innocent people through fake propaganda.
Amid the tension regarding the paper leak, Sajjanar assured that the exam is being conducted with utmost transparency. “Do not believe any kind of rumours,” the Commissioner said.
Sajjanar said that despite the temporary ban on Telegram, some people are using the app through the Virtual Private Network (VPN) to engage in malpractices.
“The Hyderabad Cyber Crime Department has already placed special surveillance on this,” he said, urging aspirants not to resort to shortcuts and ruin their valuable careers.
“If anyone contacts you on social media regarding question papers or seats and demands money. do not delay even a bit and immediately lodge a complaint by dialling 100 or contacting the local police,” Sajjanar said.
Telegram restricted ahead of NEET UG
Sajjanar’s warning comes days after the Centre banned Telegram to ensure that the NEET UG 2026 re-test on June 21 can be conducted smoothly and to prevent malpractices such as paper leak.
The government, on recommendations from the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the Department of Higher Education, had on Tuesday, June 16, invoked Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, to restrict access to Telegram until June 22. This window covers the NEET-UG 2026 re-examination scheduled for June 21 and its immediate aftermath.
Soon after the order, both Google and Apple delisted the Telegram app from their stores till then.
A separate direction required Telegram to disable, across India, the message-editing feature for already-posted messages until June 30. The government said the feature had been used by cheating rackets to fabricate after-the-event “paper leak” evidence for national examinations.
Why the ban was imposed
The NTA said both measures were a last resort, taken after coordinated channel-by-channel takedowns led by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs failed to produce adequate compliance at the platform level.
State police forces in Bihar, Gujarat and Rajasthan had been acting on intelligence shared by I4C, taking down a “substantial number” of Telegram channels, groups and bots that openly advertised fraudulent access to the NEET paper.
In a notable instance, the Ahmedabad City Cyber Crime Branch arrested members of an inter-state gang operating eight such channels, with documented transactions of approximately Rs 1.5 crore routed through fraudulent bank accounts and around 1,000 mobile numbers contacted within a single month.
Among the channels named by the NTA were “PAPER LEAKED NEET,” “Re-NEET 2026,” “Private Mafia” and “REE NEET MAFIAA” – all of which demanded sums ranging from a few thousand to several lakhs of rupees in exchange for purported access to the re-examination paper.
Follow on Twitter | Edited by Mohammed Baleegh | 
