490 accused, but no CM, in CBI’s Vyapam chargesheet

The CBI on Tuesday filed a chargesheet in the Vyapam admission scam case and, in a major relief to Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, informed the special court in Bhopal that “allegations that the hard disks and pen drives recovered from the main accused in the scam had been tampered with are unfounded”. Whistle-blower Prashant Pandey and senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh had alleged that computer hard discs seized from an accused, purportedly carrying reference of the letters “CM”, had been tampered with.

The agency in its chargesheet filed before a special CBI court said the forensic analysis of the hard disc drives seized from Nitin Mohindra, an official at Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, has shown that no files having letters “CM” were stored in them. The CBI’s chargesheet lists 490 accused, including three Vyapam officials.

Ahmedabad, Oct. 31: A “multi-millionaire” jeweller, arrested for allegedly keeping a note in a plane’s washroom about hijackers and a bomb, told interrogators that he did so hoping Jet Airways would close operations and his girlfriend, who works in its Delhi office, comes back to Mumbai.

Birju Kishore Salla, 37, a resident of Mumbai, was on Monday detained by the crime branch following the emergency landing made by the Mumbai-Delhi Jet Airways plane at the Ahmedabad airport after the pilot was alerted about the alleged note which was found in the plane’s washroom by a cabin crew.

He was on Tuesday arrested under the stringent Anti-Hijacking Act, which came into force in July replacing the 1982 vintage law.

“We have arrested him under the AntiHijacking Act sections. This is the first arrest under the Act after it came into force,” joint commissioner of police (crime) J.K. Bhatt told reporters here.

Under the provisions of the Act, an accused could face a maximum punishment of life imprisonment till death and his properties can be confiscated, the police said. Salla, a native of Dedan village under Khambha taluka in Amreli district and settled in Mumbai since the last many years, was formally arrested on Tuesday, the police said.

“Salla was detained from the plane which made an emergency landing at the city airport on Monday morning. Later, he confessed that he had prepared that threat letter,” he said.