Have you heard of the Vyapam Scam? Do you want to find out more details about the notorious Vyapam Scam? Read this Review to find out more details.
What is Vyapam Scam?
The Vyapam scam was an entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam that was unearthed in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in 2013. It involved politicians, senior and junior officials and businessmen systematically employing imposters to write papers, manipulate exam hall seating arrangements and supply forged answer sheets by bribing officials
The scam involved 13 different exams conducted by Vyapam, for selection of medical students and state government employees (including food inspectors, transport constables, police personnel, school teachers, dairy supply officers and forest guards) where the final results were rigged. The exams were taken by around 3.2 million students each year, many of whom were actually paid proxies for other undeserving students.] It also included an “engine-bogie” system wherein seating arrangements were manipulated so that a paid smarter student was seated between two others to allow the latter to copy answers from the former.
The sheer scale of the scam came to light in 2013, when the Indore police arrested 20 people who had come to impersonate candidates for PMT 2009. The interrogation of these people led to the arrest of Jagdish Sagar, the leader of an organized racket involved in the scam. The state government established a Special Task Force (STF) on 26 August 2013. Subsequent interrogations and arrests uncovered the involvement of several politicians, bureaucrats, MPPEB officials, racket leaders, middlemen, candidates and their parents in the scam. By June 2015, more than 2000 people had been arrested in connection with the scam. These included the state’s ex-education minister Laxmikant Sharma and over a hundred other politicians. In July 2015, the Supreme Court of India issued an order to transfer the case to the country’s premier investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
How The Scam Was Perpetrated
Brilliant students (including previous years’ top candidates) or practicing doctors would be paid to impersonate exam candidates. The photograph on the candidate’s admit card was replaced by the impersonator’s photograph. After the exam, it was changed back to the original. This was done in collusion with the corrupt board officials.
Cases of malpractice in Vyapam scam had been reported since 1995, and the first FIR was found in 2000 in Chhatarpur district. In 2004, seven cases were registered in Khandwa district. However, such reports of malpractice were seen as isolated cases
Initial investigations into the irregularities were conducted by the various city units of the state police. During 2009-11, a committee established by the state government and headed by the State Joint Director of Medical Education, probed the irregularities in the PMT exam
The Latest On The Vyapam Scam Case
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a charge-sheet against 160 more accused, including the chairmen of three medical colleges in Madhya Pradesh, for allegedly rigging the 2013 Pre-Medical Test (PMT) in the multi-crore Vyapam examination and recruitment scam. Those charge-sheeted include Ajay Goenka, S N Vijaywargiya and Suresh Singh Bhadoria, chairmen of Chirayu Medical College and Hospital, People’s Medical College and Hospital (both in Bhopal) and Indore-based Index Medical College and Hospital respectively,
Dinkar said 56 candidates referred to as ‘bogies’, 46 persons referred to as ‘engines’, 13 guardians of the medical course aspirants and nine middlemen were also charge-sheeted.
Madhya Pradesh police arrested Vyapam scam whistleblower Dr Anand Rai in Delhi early on Friday in connection with a case filed by an officer posted in the state Chief Minister’s Secretariat here, an official said.
Conclusion
The scam in Vyapam had come to light in 2011. The CBI had taken over investigation into the mega recruitment and admission scandal after an apex court order in 2015. A number of people connected to the scam and its investigation, died during the course of investigation. The opposition parties and activists alleged that several of these deaths happened under suspicious circumstances. In 2015, the Special Task Force (STF) submitted a list to Jabalpur High Court, naming 23 people who are believed to have died “unnatural death”. According to the STF, most of these deaths took place before it took over the investigation in July 2013. Some media reports claimed that 40+ people associated with the scam had died under mysterious circumstances.
