Govt officials among 35 booked in pan-India medical colleges scam

CBI uncovers a network of health ministry officials and private colleges manipulating medical college regulations, charging 35 for bribery and corruption.

MUMBAI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has exposed a network of officials from the Union health ministry, National Medical Commission (NMC), intermediaries, and representatives of private medical colleges, who manipulated the regulatory framework governing medical colleges across India.

Govt officials among 35 booked in pan-India medical colleges scam

The agency has booked 35 individuals for facilitating unauthorised access to highly confidential information on the regulatory status and internal processing of medical colleges, and the unlawful duplication and dissemination of such information. The accused have been charged with criminal conspiracy, bribery and corruption.

They are also accused of disclosing inspection schedules and the identities of the inspection team to the medical colleges well in advance of the official communication, according to the CBI’s First Information Report (FIR).

The leaked information allegedly enabled medical colleges to bribe assessors, set up “ghost faculty”, falsify patient records, and tamper with biometric attendance systems to secure favourable inspection reports, CBI officials said.

The accused included three members of the NMC inspection team, eight officials of the Union health ministry and a joint director-division head of the National Health Authority. Also among the accused are Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)’s chancellor DP Singh, who was chairperson of the University Grants Commission (UGC) from 2018 to 2021 (Despite repeated phone calls and text messages to Singh on Friday, HT was unable to reach him for comment).

“These acts, committed in exchange for monetary and other illicit considerations, undermine the integrity of the regulatory framework and jeopardise the quality of medical education and public health standards in the country,” the CBI FIR stated.

The FIR was registered in New Delhi on June 30, under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Prevention of Corruption Act. Charges include criminal conspiracy, demand and acceptance of undue advantage by public servants, public servants being bribed, bribing of a public servant by a commercial organisation and abetment of offences.

The agency said its sources had revealed that a group of individuals, all of them officials associated with the ministry of health, were involved in unauthorised dissemination of sensitive, classified information relating to the inspection, renewal and issuance of letters of approval for medical colleges, in exchange for bribes.

These individuals were alleged to have misused their official positions to track files within the ministry and take photographs of internal notations and comments made by senior ministry officials, according to the CBI FIR.

These images were then allegedly shared via mobile phone with private individuals and representatives of medical colleges, thereby violating official secrecy protocols and compromising the integrity of the regulatory process, according to the FIR.

Some of the accused allegedly extorted substantial sums of money from various private medical colleges in exchange for regulatory favours. The bribe money was allegedly routed to an accused in Delhi through hawala channels.

The FIR alleges that one of the accused funded the construction of a temple he was building in Rajasthan, with the bribe money. It states that he gave ₹75 lakh for the temple’s construction to a contractor from money received from an intermediary via hawala channels.