By Abhishek Shukla(Eds: Dropping a word in para 5)New Delhi, Oct 15 (PTI) The controversy over the Vyapamscam-linked deaths erupted as Madhya Pradesh police hadincluded the names of dead persons as accused in its FIRsregistered in the cases pertaining to the admission andrecruitment scam, the CBI has found.
The CBI was entrusted to look into the alleged conspiracyto eliminate suspects booked in the admissions and recruitmentscam in Madhya Pradesh. The probe agency was asked toinvestigate deaths of 24 individuals.
Among the 24 deaths, 16 had taken place much before thethe deceased were booked in the Vyapam scam by the statepolice, the probe has found, ruling out any conspiracy behindthe deaths.
The remaining deaths were due to natural causes, theagency said.
Ram Shankar (name changed) had died on June 18, 2007,from drowning but seven years later he was named as an accusedin an FIR pertaining to alleged irregularities in the MadhyaPradesh Professional Examination Board known as Vyapam,the sources said.
The probe into the case of Shankar, whose death wasalleged to be the result of a conspiracy to eliminate suspectsin the Vyapam scam, shows he had died on June 18, 2007, thesources said when asked about the case of mysterious deathslinked with Vyapam.
However, in an FIR registered on June 18, 2014, thestate police had named him as an alleged impersonator whosolved papers of aspirants for a price, they said.
The post-mortem report also shows death from drowning.
Two eye-witnesses had also confirmed it, they said.
He is not alone. The probe has found that there wasnothing suspicious about 23 deaths in which 15 preliminaryenquiries were registered by the CBI, they said.
All the 15 preliminary enquiries have been closed by theagency as nothing suspicious was found in these deaths.
In one case, the death of Namrata Damor, the agency hadregistered an FIR which is still under investigation, thesources said.
"This was the modus operandi adopted by middlemen. Duringinitial questioning, they took names of people who werealready dead portraying them as solvers or secondary middlemenor part of racket to get impersonators," a source said.
The state police had registered the cases based on theseinterrogations but when they went on their trail it emergedthat they were already dead, the sources said.
However, the alleged macabre chain of Vyapam suspectsfound dead hogged the media headlines with a controversyerupting that suspects were being eliminated as part of acriminal conspiracy and 24 such cases were transferred to theCBI by the Supreme Court.
Another such victim, whose name is being withheld, haddied on November 21, 2009, but five years later on May 13,2014, he was named by the police in three FIRs related toVyapam cases.
His post-mortem report and viscera examination showsdeath due to asphyxia by consuming poison Celphose. Thetrigger behind fatal move was found to be failed love affairand failure in studies, the sources quoting police files said.
One of these cases involved the death of a journalistfrom a leading Hindi news channel.
The agency has closed the preliminary enquiry after itfound that the he had died of cardiac arrest and there was nosign of any poisoning, the sources said, claiming thatexhaustive questioning of his colleagues was done.
The agency has concluded that either these deaths tookplace from natural causes, accidents or suicides before thescam surfaced or they took place from genuine reasons afterthe scam was reported.
One of the alleged victims had died on October 23, 2010,in an motor cycle accident. It was found he was a habitualdrinker.
The accident resulted in a fatal head injury which led tocardio-respiratory arrest, his post mortem report said.
In Vyapam scam, it is alleged that a large number ofbright students were hired by the candidates to take themedical entrance examination conducted by Madhya PradeshProfessional Examination Board known as Vyapam on their behalffor a price, CBI sources said.
Giving details, the sources said the candidates wereapproached by middlemen who engaged other middlemen toidentify bright students in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, DelhiMaharashtra, and Rajasthan who could impersonate those takingthe medical entrance examinations.
The CBI has registered 154 FIRs in connection with thealleged corruption cases which are at various stages ofinvestigation or trial.
The strategy was such that the candidate did not know thesecond middlemen or the impersonator, the sources said.
In a number of cases, the photographs in online formssubmitted by the candidates were allegedly morphed in a way tomatch with the impersonator, who was supposed to take theentrance examination on the payment of a fee, they said.
When the scam surfaced, candidates were asked to givenames of poor people who were dead as being the middlemen, thesources said.
This was allegedly done to cover the tracks so thatpolice cannot reach the actual middlemen and the examinee whoappeared on behalf of such candidates in the examination. PTIABS SKL ASKNSD.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.