CBI busts India's biggest medical scam, Godman, ex-UGC chief named

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has unearthed one of the biggest corruption racket of medical colleges across India, registering a First Information Report (FIR) that names 36 accused individuals. The case spans multiple states and involves top officials from the union health ministry, the National Medical Commission (NMC), middlemen, private college representatives, prominent educationists, and even a self-styled godman.

In this sensational CBI probe exposing the rot in India's medical education system, a nationwide bribery racket has come to light-implicating top names like DP Singh (former UGC Chairman and current TISS Chancellor), self-styled godman Rawatpura Sarkar, Suresh Singh Bhadoria of Indore's Index Medical College, and a vast network of officials and middlemen. Those who have been named in CBI FIR, including retired IFS officer Sanjay Shukla, who also served as the chairman of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA). Shukla, a former head of the Chhattisgarh Forest Department and PCCF, is linked to the Rawatpura group in the role of a trustee.

Dummy faculty, fake inspections, and leaked files were part of this multi-crore scam that stretched from Rajasthan, Gurgaon and Indore to Warangal and Visakhapatnam, with crores exchanged through hawala and banking routes -- all to secure illegal approvals for substandard medical colleges. The alleged racket also implicates officials from the Ministry of Health.

The CBI has so far arrested eight people, including three NMC doctors who allegedly took a Rs 55 lakh bribe to issue a favourable inspection report to Rawatpura Institute of Medical Sciences in Naya Raipur.Among those allegedly involved in receiving or distributing the leaked data are Virendra Kumar of Gurgaon, Manisha Joshi of Dwarka in New Delhi, and prominent medical education figures such as Suresh Singh Bhadoria, chairman of Index Medical College in Indore, and Mayur Raval, registrar of Geetanjali University in Udaipur. Virendra Kumar is said to have had close ties with Jitu Lal Meena, then a whole-time member of the Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB). Meena allegedly received bribes through hawala transactions facilitated by Kumar, who reportedly distributed funds to secure regulatory favours.

The FIR also mention the southern network of the racket, reportedly run by B Hari Prasad from Kadiri, Andhra Pradesh. Working with his associates Ankam Rambabu in Hyderabad and Krishna Kishore in Visakhapatnam, Prasad was allegedly instrumental in arranging dummy faculty and facilitating backdoor regulatory approvals for bribes.Hari Prasad’s partners—Krishna Kishore and Ankam Rambabu—allegedly collected bribes from directors of two southern colleges: Venkat from Gayatri Medical College, Visakhapatnam and Father Joseph Kommareddy of Father Colombo Institute of Medical Sciences, Warangal.

The scam reportedly originated within the health ministry when eight officials gave unauthorized access to confidential files to middlemen and college representatives in exchange for hefty bribes. The officials clicked photographs of internal notings and shared them through intermediaries. The CBI has identified the accused health ministry officials as Poonam Meena, Dharamvir, Piyush Malyan, Anup Jaiswal, Rahul Srivastava, Deepak, Manisha, and Chandan Kumar.