The Central Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday said it has charged 95 people in the Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh, PTI reported. This comes after the agency had charged 592 people in connection with the case in November 2017.
The agency is investigating a case related to the alleged irregularities in various entrance and recruitment examinations conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, also known as the Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal, or Vyapam. Although FIRs in the scam were filed since 1995, the racket finally came to light in May 2012.
The agency has named 83 candidates, four officials of Vyapam and eight middlemen in its chargesheet.
“It was revealed from the files contained in the hard disk of the computer of the then principal system analyst of Vyapam that marks of certain candidates were allegedly increased to enable them to qualify the said test,” CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal told PTI.
He said it was verified with the OMR answer sheets of the candidates which had the actual marks and it was found that marks of 84 candidates were increased, in the final result, to make them qualify the examination. Dayal added that one candidate is absconding and investigation in underway in his case.
The CBI has alleged that the analyst had created a private file on his computer with details of the candidates and people who had recommended their names. After the results were declared, the official had created another database of the favoured candidates with their marks.
“It was also alleged that in the result database, he increased the marks as per the requirement of the candidates...and thereafter the actual marks obtained by the 84 accused candidates were deleted from the result file,” Dayal said.
In November 2017, the CBI had named promoters of three private medical colleges in Bhopal – LN Medical College Chairman JN Choksey, SN Vijaywargiya of the People’s Medical College and Ajay Goenka of the Chirayu Medical College – in its chargesheet. Suresh Suresh Singh Bhadoriya of the Index Medical College in Indore was also named.
Former Vyapam officials Pankaj Trivedi, Nitin Mohindra, Ajay Kumar Sen and CK Mishra were also mentioned as accused in the chargesheet.
On October 31, 2017, the CBI gave a clean chit to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and filed a chargesheet against 490 people in the Vyapam scam. The agency said evidence in the case was not tampered with. On October 15, the CBI had ruled out any conspiracy behind the deaths linked with the scam.
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