Vyapam case: SC to hear CBI plea on 20 July

New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) plea on 20 July, asking that the special investigating team (SIT) be allowed to file chargesheets in Vyapam scam cases, as and when it closes the probe into each case.

Since the court had earlier ordered that all 185 cases under the ongoing probe be transferred from the SIT to the CBI, the latter submitted that this could take time and the accused will get statutory bail on account of non-filing of chargesheets within the stipulated period. Read more

The apex court had on 9 July ordered transfer of the probe into all Vyapam scam cases to the CBI and had taken on record the submission of the Madhya Pradesh government that it had no objection to the cases being transferred.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also sought responses from the Centre, state and others on several pleas seeking a CBI probe into the irregularities in the Dental and Medical Admission Test to fill management and government seats in private medical colleges in Madhya Pradesh. The bench said, “It seems that DMAT scam is worse than Vyapam scam.”

The Times of India reports that at the outset of the hearing, the bench expressed reservations in ordering a CBI probe into the alleged DMAT scam along with Vyapam, saying that DMAT was conducted by a different authority. But all advocates including Indira Jaising and Prashant Bhushan argued that DMAT was related to Vyapam and the CBI should also investigate it.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, went into damage control mode and suspended its leader and member of the Madhya Pradesh Backward Class and Minority Welfare Commission Gulab Singh Kirar. The suspension came a day after the CBI filed an FIR against Kirar, his son Shakti Singh and 18 others for allegedly rigging the 2011 pre-PG examination.

MP BJP chief Nandkumar Singh Chouhan said that Kirar may not even be a party leader anymore. “Gulab Singh Kirar would not remain in his post for long,” he said in a press conference. The CBI has registered FIRs against 160 people, including Kirar, who was a member of the Backward Classes Commission, and Sudhir Singh Bhadoria, who was Vyapam’s controller of examinations between 2006 and 2011.

The special task force, which probed the scam before the CBI took over this week, had named Kirar as an accused in a medical test racket in Gwalior in July last year. He was accused of helping son Shakti Pratap, also named as an accused now, fraudulently crack the test in 2011. The Telegraph has more here.

India Today reports that the CBI will function out of a “haunted bungalow” in Bhopal notorious for untimely deaths of its occupants and other serious controversies.

Meanwhile, it’s not just activists, Opposition leaders or whistleblowers who are waiting eagerly for the CBI to start investigation the Vyapam scam, there are some accused who claim they were dragged into the mess for no fault of their own. Read more

The Congress had on Thursday called for a statewide bandh with party general secretary Digvijaya Singh and state unit president Arun Yadav demanding chief minister Shivarj Singh Chouhan’s resignation over the Vyapam scam. However, the opposition was quick to point out that the bandh was “totally hollow as markets in the state normally open after 11 am” and reports claim the bandh was not supported by a section of the Muslim community as it was called on the eve of Eid festivities.