CBI arrests retired HC judge, 5 others
THE ARRESTS WERE MADE AFTER SEARCHES WERE CONDUCTED IN EIGHT PLACES IN DELHI AND BHUBANESWAR
The CBI has arrested a retired judge of Orissa high court and four others in connection with a medical admission scam.
According to a CBI FIR, reviewed by HT, judge IM Quddusi and his alleged accomplice, Bhawana Pandey, had assured representatives of Prasad Education Trust that runs Lucknowbased Prasad Institute of Medical Sciences that they would get their “matter settled” in the Supreme Court using their contacts.
The institute is among the 46 colleges that have been barred by the government from admitting students for the next few years due to “sub-standard facilities and non-fulfilment of the required criteria”.
Accordingly, the duo got in touch with one Biswanath Agrawala from Bhubaneswar, who claimed to have a very close contact with senior relevant public functionaries. Besides Quddusi, the five arrested include Agrawala, Pandey, two representatives of the trust — BP Yadav and Palash Yadav — and an alleged hawala dealer, Ramdev Saraswat. It is Pandey’s second brush with the CBI. She was earlier arrested by the agency in 2001 in a bribery scandal involving then Central Board of Excise and Customs chief BP Verma.
Quddusi was a judge of Odisha HC between 2004 and 2010.
The arrests were made after searches were conducted in eight places in New Delhi and Bhubaneswar in connection with the case. The CBI recovered ₹1 crore from Agrawala, soon after he got the money from the alleged hawala dealer in Chandni Chownk area of the city. The searches also led to a seizure of ₹90 lakh more.
The institute had challenged the debarment order in SC. On August 1, the court gave a combined order, on the petitions of the Prasad Institute and other such petitioners, asking the government to take a fresh look into the cases of these institutes.
Following the directive, the government gave a hearing to the Prasad Institute and decided to debar the college for 2017-18 and 2018-19 for admitting fresh students and asked the Medical Council of India to encash its bank guarantee of ₹2 crore.