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Vyapam whistleblower Anand Rai granted bail
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for the petitioner told the Rai Supreme Court that the petitioner was kept in solitary confinement in jail, considered the worst punishment for a prisoner, for nearly two months.
The Supreme Court on Friday granted bail to Anand Rai, the whistleblower in the Vyapam Scam, following his arrest in November in a Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act which he claimed to be a false case aimed to wreak vengeance by his political rivals.
Rai challenged an order passed by the Madhya Pradesh high court on December 12 denying him bail. Noting that the petitioner was in custody since November 15, a bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and justice PS Narasimha ordered his release on bail.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for the petitioner told the Rai Supreme Court that the petitioner was kept in solitary confinement in jail, considered the worst punishment for a prisoner, for nearly two months.
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Rai, a doctor working in a state-run hospital in Madhya Pradesh, was invited to an event by the tribal organisation Jai Adiwasi Yuva Shakti on November 15 last year to commemorate the contribution of freedom fighter Birsa Munda. However, while returning from the event, Rai claimed he was arrested by police on a complaint that he was part of a group which allegedly took part in sloganeering and pelted stones at a cavalcade of local political leaders in which the district collector’s staff was injured.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta appearing for the state told the top court that “The so-called whistleblower has four to five other first information reports (FIR) against him before he blew the so-called whistle.” Although Rai claimed he was not present at the place where stone pelting took place, the state countered the statement by producing call records to show his presence at the time of the alleged incident.
Rai claimed that the present FIR was at the behest of the accused in the Vyapam scam as the whistleblower, he exposed how the children of politicians and bureaucrats cleared the medical entrance examination in the state without appearing for it.
