The Chargesheet Mp4moviez

[Michele Firmasyah]

The scam 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.[2][3]

Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB), popularly known by its Hindi acronym "Vyapam" (Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal), is a self-financed and autonomous body incorporated by the state government responsible for conducting several entrance tests in the state.[4] These entrance exams are held for recruitment in government jobs and admissions in educational institutes of the state.

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.[5] 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.[6]

The scam involved a collusion of undeserving candidates, who bribed politicians and MPPEB officials through middlemen, to get high ranks in these entrance tests. The scam also led to between 23 and 40 'unnatural' deaths of involved individuals, though unofficial figures run well into more than a 100 custodial deaths including the erstwhile MP Governor's son and deaths in staged road accidents.[7][8]Cases of irregularities in these entrance tests had been reported since the mid-1990s, and the first FIR was filed in 2000. However, until 2009, such cases were not thought to be part of an organized ring. When major complaints surfaced in the pre-medical test (PMT) in 2009, the state government established a committee to investigate the matter. The committee released its report in 2011, and over a hundred people were arrested by the police. However, none of the accused have been convicted as most of them either suspiciously died in custody or were released on bail.[9]

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). In the same year, the Wikipedia page of Vyapam scam became the 19th most viewed page on Wikipedia globally.[10]

Many senior personnel including Justice Bhushan who heads the Special Investigative team and Indian doctors including Anand Rai (the whistle blower in this case) are of the opinion that the Vyapam scam was functional since the 1990s when they themselves took their medical exams.[11] They also believe that similar "systems" of proxies giving medical exams are operational in other states of India as well.[12]

The Vyapam scam involved collusion among exam candidates, government officials and middlemen: undeserving candidates were offered high marks in the exams, in exchange for kickbacks. The following tricks were used by those involved in the scam:[14]

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.[15]

A report by the Madhya Pradesh Local Fund Audit office for 2007-08 found several financial and administrative irregularities in MPPEB, including unauthorized disposal of application forms.[15] It was suspected that the application forms were being destroyed so that they could not be compared to exam admit cards and other records. In 2009, fresh complaints of irregularities in the pre-medical test (PMT) surfaced.[16] Indore-based activist Anand Rai filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) requesting investigation into the scam.[17] In 2009, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan set up a committee headed by the State Joint Director of Medical Education to probe the allegations.[18]

In December 2011, the MP Government announced that all the students who had gained admissions by fraudulent means would be asked to quit their courses. This included those who had already spent some years taking the course.[20]

On 13 July 2013, Jagdish Sagar was arrested in Mumbai.[25] A list containing names of 317 students was confiscated from him. MPPEB's exam controller Pankaj Trivedi, who was not a suspect in the scam [26]at that time, tried to protect these students. He sent a letter to various government departments and the deans of medical colleges, insisting that these students should be allowed admission once they sign an affidavit. The affidavit would state that they didn't use any unfair means, and that their admissions would be canceled if they were found guilty in the police investigations. On 28 September 2013, Trivedi was also arrested, based on Jagdish Sagar's interrogation.[27] On 5 October, the Special Task Force (STF) of the police chargesheeted 28 people, including Jagdish Sagar. In December 2013, the STF produced a 23,000-page supplementary chargesheet against 34 accused in the Indore district court. Out of these 34 accused chargesheeted, 30 were students and their guardians. Four others included Pankaj Trivedi, Dr. Sanjeev Shilpkar and Dr. Jagdish Sagar's accomplice Gangaram Pipliya.[23]

In November 2013, the STF found that the scamsters had rigged five recruitment tests: Pre-PG, Food Inspector Selection Test, Milk Federation test, Subedar-Sub Inspector and Platoon Commander Selection Test and Police Constable Recruitment Test - all held during 2012 for government jobs in the state. For Pre-PG Test of 2012, MPPEB's former examination controller Dr Pankaj Trivedi and its system analyst Nitin Mahindra provided model answer keys to candidates through photocopies. For the other four exams, the Vyapam officials manipulated the OMR answer sheets by taking them out of the strong room. Different FIRs against 153 people, including Sudhir Sharma, were filed. Sharma had earlier been interrogated by CBI in mining scam of Madhya Pradesh.[28] In March 2014, the government announced that the STF was investigating rigging of nine examinations, and 127 people had been arrested.[29]

The previous years' PMT exams were also investigated. The STF found that 286 candidates had cleared PMT-2012 through fraudulent means. On 29 April 2014, 27 students of MGM Medical College in Indore were expelled for having used fraudulent means to clear PMT-2012.[30]

In June 2014, the High Court asked the police why several of the accused in the case had not been arrested yet. Following this, the STF made several arrests. On 15 June, the STF arrested the state's former technical education minister and BJP leader Laxmikant Sharma for his alleged involvement in the contractual teachers recruitment scam. On 18 and 19 June 2014, the police arrested over 100 medical students from different parts of the state, for their involvement in the PMT scam.[31]

In September 2014, the STF revealed that Jagdish Sagar's racket had also rigged the entrance exams for recruitment in SBI and other nationalized banks. These entrance exams included the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection's exams and the SBI Probationary Officer's exam.[32]

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.[18]

After the role of organized crime rackets and politicians in the scam came to light, the state government formed a Special Task Force (STF) of the police on 26 August 2013, to investigate the scam. Several activists and politicians, including members of the major opposition Indian National Congress party, demanded a CBI probe in the scam under the supervision of the Supreme Court of India.[33] Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chouhan did not entertain the suggestion of a CBI inquiry to the probe initially.[34] On 5 November 2014, Madhya Pradesh High Court also rejected the Congress leader Digvijay Singh's petition for CBI probe and instead ordered setting up of a special investigation team (SIT) to act as a watchdog for the court.[35] The SIT is a three-member team chaired by Justice Chandresh Bhushan, a retired Judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. During 2014-2015, the scam was investigated by the STF under the supervision of SIT.[36]

On 7 July 2015, after controversy about increasing number of allegedly suspicious deaths, Chouhan informed media that he will write to High Court of Madhya Pradesh requesting to order a CBI probe into the scam.[37] On the same day, the opposition National Congress Party requested for resignation of Chouhan to allow fair probe into the scam.[38] Application was filed before the High Court to transfer the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which however ordered to await the decision of the Supreme Court on similar applications. On 9 July 2015, the Attorney General for India told Supreme Court that State of Madhya Pradesh had no objection whatsoever for transferring the investigation to the CBI, upon which the Supreme Court ordered to transfer the 'criminal cases related to the scam and also the cases related to deaths allegedly linked with scam to the CBI, country's premier investigating agency.[39] However who will monitor the investigation process was not announced.[40][41]

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