Vyapam scam: CBI seeks action against over 200 med students

Agencies
November 26, 2017

New Delhi, Nov 26: The future of over 200 students, who took admission in four private medical colleges of Madhya Pradesh through management quota on a hefty payment, might hang in the balance after a CBI probe into a Vyapam case claimed irregularities in their selection, officials said.

The probe agency had written to the Madhya Pradesh government, seeking necessary action against these candidates, who did not appear in any entrance exam for admission in the medical colleges, they added.

The move was based on a probe conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the Pre-Medical Test (PMT), conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (Vyapam in Hindi) in 2012, the officials said.

On Thursday, the agency filed a charge sheet in a special CBI court in Bhopal against 592 accused, including the chairmen of the four private medical colleges, for their alleged involvement in the recruitment scam.

The promoters were -- J N Choksey, chairman of the L N Medical College; S N Vijaywargiya of the People's Medical College; Ajay Goenka of the Chirayu Medical College (all in Bhopal) and Suresh Singh Bhadoriya of the Index Medical College, Indore, the officials said.

While three promoters did not comment when contacted by PTI, Bhadoriya claimed that neither his nor his college's name was mentioned on the CBI charge sheet.

A total of 229 admissions were made by these four colleges under the management quota, by charging an amount between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 1 crore per seat, allegedly in violation of norms, the CBI officials said.

What was worrying was that the students who got admission through the management quota did not appear in any entrance exam, they added.

Of the 229 of such admissions, 88 were in the Index Medical College, 54 in the Chirayu Medical College, 46 in the People's Medical College and 41 in the L N Medical College, the officials said.

These admissions were done allegedly in connivance with the officials of the Vyapam, which has since been renamed as the Professional Examination Board, officials of the medical education department of the Madhya Pradesh government and some middlemen, they added.

Explaining the modus operandi, the officials said the middlemen followed an "engine-bogey" system for the pairing of candidates.
Under this arrangement, a bright candidate (who had already taken coaching classes to prepare for the entrance test and was well-versed with the examination pattern) would be alloted a roll number just ahead of a not-so-bright aspirant, so that the latter could cheat from him, they added.

The bright candidate would act as the "engine" and the other student as the "bogey", the officials said.

The middlemen charged anything between Rs 15 and 20 lakh for this pairing, they added.

Elaborating further, the officials said on the basis of successful selection, the bright students would then take admission only in the four medical colleges named in the charge sheet, despite their names featuring in the merit list and hence, they were eligible for admission in government institutions.

These successful candidates, in connivance with the middlemen and office-bearers of private medical colleges, would later withdraw their admission, they said.

Instead of reporting these vacancies to the state government department concerned, the college authorities would fill these seats through the management quota, charging a hefty amount, the officials said.

Among those named in the charge sheet, 334 were "engine- bogey" candidates, 155 were the guardians of these candidates, 46 invigilators of the examination, 26 officials of the four private medical colleges, 22 middlemen, four former Vyapam officials and two officers of the department of medical education, Madhya Pradesh, they added.

The state government officials named in the charge sheet were S C Tiwari, the then director, and N M Srivastava, the then joint director in the medical education department, the officials said.

The four former Vyapam officials named in the charge sheet were the then director Pankaj Trivedi, then senior system analyst Nitin Mohindra, then deputy analyst Ajay Kumar Sen and the then programmer C K Mishra, they added.

In the CBI charge sheet, 245 people have been named as accused of the first time. The others were named in different charge sheets filed earlier by the central probe agency.

The CBI is looking into the several cases of alleged massive irregularities in various examinations conducted by the Vyapam to select candidates for medical colleges and also for state government jobs.

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News Network
December 23,2025

pakleader.jpg

A Pakistani lawmaker has called out the hypocrisy of his country's leadership, drawing a parallel between Islamabad's military actions against Kabul and India's 'Operation Sindoor'.

Condemning the Pakistan army, led by Asim Munir, for strikes on Afghanistan - which resulted in civilian casualties - Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman questioned the consistency of Islamabad's logic. He argued that if Pakistan's cross-border attacks are considered justified, then the country has little ground to object when India enters Pakistani territory to eliminate terrorists.

Rehman was addressing the 'Majlis-e-Ittehad-e-Ummat' conference on Monday in Karachi's Lyari. The town recently gained international attention as the setting for the Ranveer Singh-starrer Dhurandhar, which depicted the intersection of informants and operatives within the Lyari underworld.

"If you say that we attacked our enemy in Afghanistan and justify this, then India can also say that it attacked Bahawalpur, Muridke, and the headquarters of groups responsible for the attack in Kashmir," Rehman said, referring to India's retaliatory strikes. "Then how can you raise objections? The same accusations are now being levelled against Pakistan by Afghanistan. How do you justify both positions?"

The JUI-F chief's remarks specifically referenced 'Operation Sindoor'.

On May 7, Indian armed forces carried out pre-dawn missile strikes on nine terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, including the Jaish-e-Mohammad stronghold of Bahawalpur and Lashkar-e-Taiba's base in Muridke.

Pak-Afghanistan Tension

Fazlur Rehman has been a consistent critic of the Pakistani government's policy towards Afghanistan. In October, during a peak in bilateral tensions, he offered to mediate between the two nations. According to a Dawn report, he stated, "In the past, I have played a role in reducing tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and I can still do so."

Rehman is known to wield significant influence within the region and remains the only Pakistani lawmaker to have met with the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada.

Recently, India condemned Pakistan's fresh strikes on Afghanistan. "We have seen reports of border clashes in which several Afghan civilians have been killed," Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said at a weekly media briefing.

"We condemn such attacks on innocent Afghan people. India strongly supports the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Afghanistan," he said.

A spokesperson for the Taliban regime claimed Pakistan initiated the attacks and that Kabul was "forced to respond".

The two countries have been locked in an increasingly bitter dispute since the Taliban authorities retook control in Kabul in 2021, with Islamabad accusing its neighbour of harbouring terrorists - a charge that the Afghan government denies.

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