BHOPAL: A Wing Commander of the Indian Air Force posted at the IAF HQ in New Delhi has been arrested for posing as Union home minister Amit Shah while talking to Madhya Pradesh Governor Lalji Tandon over the phone to facilitate the appointment of his Bhopal-based dental surgeon friend as Vice-Chancellor of the Madhya Pradesh Medical Science University (MPMSU) in Jabalpur.
Wing Commander Kuldip Vaghela and the dental surgeon Chandresh Kumar Shukla were arrested by the MP Police special task force (MPSTF) on Friday and have been booked under Sections 419 and 420 of the IPC for cheating by impersonation.
The MP Governor is the Chancellor of the MPMSU-Jabalpur -- the university and governing body for all Medicine, Dental, Nursing, Paramedical, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Unani and Yoga colleges in the state.
According to additional director general of police (ADG-MPSTF) Ashok Awasthi, the process of selecting the next Vice Chancellor of the MPMSU was initiated in July 2019, as part of which the MP Governor had ordered the constitution of a Search Committee.
A Bhopal-based dental surgeon Dr Chandresh Kumar Shukla (who runs a clinic Dental World in Bhopal) too applied for the MPMSU V-C post and appeared in the interview before the Search Committee on January 3, 2020.
“On January 3, he (Dr Shukla) contacted his friend Wing Commander Kuldip Baghel (who is posted on senior position at the IAF HQ in New Delhi) for using some high contact/office to facilitate the appointment as MPMSU VC. Subsequently, Dr Shukla made a conference call to the MP Raj Bhawan on January 3. During the call, Wing Commander Kuldip Vaghela, while impersonating Union home minister Amit Shah, talked to the MP Governor Lalji Tandon for facilitating his friend’s appointment as MPMSU VC,” said Awasthi.
But after the conference call, the MP Governor sensed something was wrong, after which the Raj Bhawan apparatus got in touch with the ministry of home affairs (MHA) to verify whether the Union home minister had actually rung the Governor or not.
However, it then became clear that someone had impersonated the union home minister. The Raj Bhawan complained on Thursday to the MPSTF which immediately swung into action. “The Wing Commander Kuldip Vaghela was arrested from Delhi on Thursday and his friend Dr Chandresh Kumar Shukla was arrested from Bhopal,” the ADG-MPSTF said.
Wing Commander Kuldip Vaghela, who hails from Ratlam district of MP, was posted as the aide-de-camp (ADC) to then Madhya Pradesh Governor Ram Naresh Yadav in 2014.
The arrested duo was produced before a Special Court in Bhopal on Friday, after which the court sent the duo into three days STF custody for further questioning.