The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has unearthed a massive case of corruption in medical education in India, involving senior officials from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), the National Medical Commission (NMC), and several representatives from private medical colleges across the country, as well as a former chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC).
A First Information Report (FIR) has also been filed in the case on Monday, June 30.
This deep-rooted conspiracy involved pervasive bribery to obtain favourable treatment for private institutions, the manipulation of statutory inspection procedures, and the unapproved sharing of classified regulatory information, an official from the CBI told The Indian Express.
A regular case under Section 61(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita and Sections 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 of the Prevention of Corruption Act has been registered in this matter. The accused thus stand implicated with charges including bribery and criminal conspiracy to breach official secrecy and forgery.
According to the CBI, a group of public officials in New Delhi, including those directly connected to the health ministry and the NMC, reportedly facilitated illegal access to private information pertaining to the inspection, recognition, and renewal processes for medical institutions.
Among those listed in the FIR is DP Singh, Chancellor of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and former chairman of the University Grants Commission.
According to the FIR, college representatives were apparently given advance notice of the secret information, which included inspection schedules and assessor identities.
This enables institutions to construct fraudulent setups during official inspections, such as using ghost faculty, admitting bogus patients, interfering with biometric attendance systems, and bribing assessors to gain positive findings, according to one official.
According to the FIR, those who allegedly received the leaked data included Virendra Kumar of Gurugram, Manisha Joshi of Dwarka, New Delhi, and several senior figures affiliated with medical institutions in India.
These included Suresh Singh Bhadoria, Chairman of Index Medical College in Indore, and Mayur Raval, Registrar of Geetanjali University in Udaipur.
Investigations have revealed that Virendra Kumar maintained contacts with Jitu Lal Meena, a full-time member of the Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB), and worked as an intermediary in the collection of bribes via hawala networks.
Furthermore, the FIR stated that Kumar's operations stretched into southern India through his partner B Hari Prasad of Kadiri, Andhra Pradesh.
Prasad, along with his associates Ankam Rambabu in Hyderabad and Krishna Kishore in Visakhapatnam, were allegedly involved in organising phoney faculty and expediting regulatory permissions in exchange for bribes.
The network also included institutions like the Father Colombo Institute of Medical Sciences in Warangal, where Hari Prasad reportedly received substantial amounts, exceeding Rs 4 crore, for obtaining good NMC results. These payments were made through middlemen using official banking channels.
