Whistleblowers say if state govt probes, deaths will continue

Whistleblowers in a multicrore professional examination recruitment scam in Madhya Pradesh demanded a Supreme Court-monitored-CBI probe on Sunday, saying the suspicious deaths of people linked to the scandal would continue if the state government remained in charge of the investigation.

The appeal comes after the dean of a Jabalpur-based medical college Arun Sharma was found dead in a Delhi hotel room on Sunday, hours after a journalist, Akshay Singh, who was reporting on the scam collapsed and died in the middle of an interview.

“With each death, the sequence of investigation breaks and the evidence is affected, thereby helping the scamsters. It is high time the case is handed over to CBI”, said former MLA and whistleblower Paras Saklecha in Bhopal.

At least 2,000 people have been arrested and another 500 are wanted for their role in rigging the professional tests conducted by the MP Professional Examination Board (PEB) for admissions and recruitment to various courses and government jobs. But the investigation has been dogged with mysterious deaths of witnesses, accused and whistleblowers and the two latest deaths bring up the toll up to about 40.

“The deaths are suspicious. There are poisons and even certain seeds, if administered, lead to deaths due to cardiac arrest within two hours”, said Dr Anand Rai, the initial whistleblower in the scam.

He raised questions on the manner in which deaths are being handled, especially, the post-mortems. In spite of mounting protests by Opposition, CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan has ruled out a CBI probe and state minister Babulal Gaur has even said all deaths natural.