NEW DELHI: Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has been quizzed on her alleged involvement in the `10,000-crore National Rural Health Mission scam, CBI officials said on Friday.
Sources said the CBI sleuths questioned Mayawati at her house on Thyagaraja Marg here on Monday. “She was not questioned at the CBI headquarters, but at her house,” an official said. Mayawati reportedly evaded crucial questions and even feigned ignorance on some of the decisions taken during her tenure as Chief Minister.
“She did not co-operate,” said the official.
The CBI officials interrogated her on the bifurcation of the Health and Family Welfare Department and the creation of 100 posts of District Project Officers, who were allegedly involved in the scam. The agency alleges that the bifurcation of the department was done to ensure that NRHM funds would directly go to the Department of Family Welfare, which was under Minister Babu Singh Kushwaha, who has already been chargesheeted by the agency.
Arrested on March 3, 2012, Kushwaha is in jail. He recently moved the Supreme Court seeking bail. Dismissing the former minister’s plea, the court on February 13 said the allegations against him were very serious.
The agency has lodged 74 scam-related cases and has filed chargesheets in 48 of them.