Bhopal: A special CBI court in Bhopal sat for nearly 12 hours till 2:30am on Friday to reject the interim bail pleas of many people accused in the multi-crore Vyapam professional examination and job recruitment scam.
The court of special CBI judge D.P. Mishra began proceedings at 3pm on Thursday to hear the bail petitions of 30 people. Court sources said this was the first time in the country that a trial court had continued hearing till such a late hour.
The people whose bail pleas were turned down included several well-known figures in Bhopal such as Dr Ajay Goenka, chairman of Chirayu Medical College, Suresh Vijaywargiya, chairman of Peoples Hospital, Dr D.K. Satpathy, Dr Ravi Saxena, Dr Vinayak Bhavsar, Dr Ashok Jain, Dr S.C. Tiwari, Dr Ashok Nagnath, Dr N.M. Shrivastava and Dr Vijay Kumar.
The accused, who now face arrest, can move Jabalpur High Court against the CBI court order, sources said.
On October 31, the special CBI court had sat till 9pm when the agency filed a chargesheet against 490 accused people, including 17 touts, 297 "solvers and beneficiaries" and 170 guardians of candidates in connection with alleged irregularities in the pre-medical tests conducted in 2013.
On Thursday, the CBI filed its second chargesheet against another 592 people.
Vyapam is a self-financed and autonomous body in Madhya Pradesh that conducts professional exams.
CBI special public prosecutor Satish Dinkar explained to the court on Thursday how the Vyapam scam had worked.
Dinkar said "racketeers" got the roll numbers "manipulated" in such a way through Vyapam officials that each "beneficiary" candidate sat right behind his "solver", aiding cheating.
The CBI investigation also pointed to the complicity of some medical education department officials and members of the admission committees of four private medical colleges in Bhopal and Indore.
The Vyapam scam came to light in July 2013 when eight alleged impersonators were arrested during a pre-medical test in Indore. By that time, thousands of undeserving candidates had got admission to the state's medical and other professional colleges.
Several hundreds got government jobs after paying hefty amounts to touts, who in turn shared the money with bureaucrats and politicians.
According to the CBI, the modus operandi had three key steps:
Impersonation: Hired students with proven academic credentials wrote the exams in place of the candidates. Later, Vyapam officials replaced the photographs of the impersonators with those of the original candidates on the admit cards.
Engine and bogie system: An impersonator (engine) would be strategically placed between two candidates (bogies) so that both could copy from the impostor's answer sheet. The examiners were bribed to fix the seating arrangements.
Answer sheet manipulation: Candidates would be asked to leave their OMR answer booklets blank and they would be awarded random high marks later. Vyapam officials would then file an RTI plea seeking to view the answer sheets. They would fill in the answers in the OMR booklets according to the marks awarded to the candidates.
