BHOPAL: THE Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday filed a charge sheet against 95 accused in the Contractual Teachers Eligibility (Grade III) Examination 2011 scam, which is part of the larger multi-layered Vyapam scam.
The charge sheet was filed in the designated CBI court of Special Judge S C Upadhyaya in Bhopal against 83 candidates, four Vyapam officials and eight middlemen.The eight chargesheeted middlemen include former Madhya Pradesh higher and technical education minister and ex-BJP MLA from Sironj (Vidisha), Laxmikant Sharma, and his officer on special duty (OSD), O P Shukla.
According to CBI counsel Satish Dinkar, of the 95 accused chargesheeted on Tuesday, 56 had already been chargesheeted by the special task force of the state police (MP STF) in the past before the CBI took over investigations in the case in July 2015. The other 39 accused, all candidates, were chargesheeted for the first time in the case on Tuesday. Eight of the 39 candidates appeared before the court and applied for bail. The judge granted them bail on production of a personal surety bond of `1 lakh each, the CBI counsel added.
Former minister Sharma, who is out on bail in multiple cases related to the scam, too appeared before the court as part of the regular hearing in the case on Tuesday. He was arrested in the case in June 2014, six months after the MP STF had booked him. He resigned from the BJP the same month. Sharma was released in December 2015 after being granted bail by the MP High Court. His OSD too is out on bail.
The CBI registered the case in the scam in July 2015. Investigation of files on the computer of Nitin Mohindra, then principal system analyst of Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal (Vyapam), showed that the marks of certain candidates had been allegedly increased to enable them to pass the test. Mohindra is among the four Vyapam staff charge-sheeted on Tuesday.