There is unbelievable and then there is you have to be joking, this cannot be happening, it is far too bizarre.
The Vyapam medical entrance examination scam in India has no precedent in the world. No ponzy scheme has even come close to it. Its mind boggling stats make for fiction ... except that they are true. There are 2,500 accused and 1,900 are in prison. About 500 are missing and 60 cases have been filed. As high as 7.7 million candidates paid bribes to get into the examination or have it done by proxy.
Over the past decade thousands of doctors, engineers, professionals have entered the mainstream and held jobs on qualifications that are murky at best and totally deceitful at worst. So, they are treating patients, building bridges, engaging in construction works, supervising projects and they have no background for it ... talk about on the job training.
Can you believe that 35 people connected with this hideous plot have died, many of them in mysterious circumstances? According to some reports those removed from this grim chessboard are 46 individuals. The last was a few days ago when Arun Verma a professor and principal of a college helping in the investigation was found dead in his room. Akshay Singh a journalist interviewing the father of a suspect medical student who died in 2012 conveniently had a heart attack after drinking a cup of tea. Others who have kicked the bucket include witnesses, accused and informants.
And what was this chicanery about?
In simple terms you paid money upfront to get a chance to sit for the entrance examination to medical school and if you were too busy you could send a smarter friend to ‘sit’ in for you. The scam then extended across the board to all government jobs. Such sit ins (stand ins, if you like) were also positioned in jobs as teachers and doctors. Incredibly the governor’s staff are also alleged to be involved. Some of his people were part of the gang that manipulated admissions and recruitment tests. The governor’s former Officer on Special Duty Dhanraj Yadav was arrested ... some special duties. Yet Governor Ram Yadav survives and has not allowed the hot, little buck to stop with him.
For the past two years, a special task force has been probing the issue but people still keep dying. Anchul Sachan, Anuj Uikey and Shyamveer Yadav all died in a car crash. Namarat Damor, whose dad was being interviewed by the journalist was found dead near a railway track. Devendra Nagar, a witness was killed in a car smash as was Deepak Verma. Ramendra Singh, Bunty Sikarwar and Rinku Sharma, possible approvers committed suicide. D.K. Sakalle the predecessor to the principal who was murdered recently ostensibly set himself on fire. The governor’s son Shailesh Yadav died under unexplained circumstances.
Do you find all this a little bit suspicious? Does it cross your mind that perhaps there are grounds for a full fledged criminal inquiry or do you think is okay, it happens? After all, Madhya Pradesh is well known for the disappearance of witnesses and there is a trail of such occurrences in the recent past.
If it wasn’t so tragic the Vyapam scam would be comedy of our times.
The sheer magnitude of the cheating and the power and might of those behind it that things still have not been brought to an end is overwhelmingly depressing. The moment someone gets a little too close to the sensitive areas he or she gets snuffed out.
No one seems the least bit bothered and last week things reached the peak of absurdity when the state government felt there was no call to widen the probe but finally succumbed to okaying a three year old demand for a CBI investigation. What was it waiting for? Now the High Court has to okay the request and will study the petition from Chief Minister Shivraj Chouhan next week. It is possible it might reject the plea and say the current three man tribunal is enough to get to the bottom of this gigantic five year ongoing travesty.
It seems just about everyone who is anyone was in on the tricks and it was par for the course to pay and get a roll number.
The most appalling part is that the number of people involved in the whole swindle could be as high as 7,000 so you can just imagine that it survived five years before unraveling which means those on the top of the heap had given it their blessings. There is no way that so many people could have kept it going without being caught unless the fraud had been sanctified.
There is no gainsaying the fact that the Vyapam scandal has no precedent. If it wasn’t so tragic it would be a comedy and citadel to corruption en masse.
