The scandal had rocked the monsoon session of parliament with the Congress demanding that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan should step down to allow a free and fair probe
New Delhi : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that stepped into the massive admission-cum recruitment scam of the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board ( MPPEB) after a directive from the Supreme Court has sought another three weeks’ time to take over all the cases.
Known as the Vyapam scam, the scandal had rocked the monsoon session of parliament with the Congress demanding that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan should step down to allow a free and fair probe.
However, the BJP leadership stoutly resisted the demand, and saw a vindication of its stand as under Chauhan’s stewardship the party notched up a sweeping success in the elections to the local bodies.
Filing an affidavit before the court, the CBI has sought three weeks to engage special prosecutors in these cases and requested the apex court to allow Madhya Pradesh government’s public prosecutors to continue until then, so that the routine hearings of the cases don’t get affected.
It has also sought clarification from the SC on taking over the Vyapam cases.
As per the CBI, 212 cases of the Vyapam cases are identified till now, out of which 119 cases are yet to be investigated and charge sheets are to be filed.
The CBI also sought clarification that whether it had to take over the 119 pending cases or all 212 cases including charge sheeted ones. On July 9, an SC bench headed by Chief Justice HL Dattu transferred the probe of all Vyapam cases, including related deaths, to the CBI. Earlier, the Special Task Force (STF) was investigating the cases under the supervision of the MP High Court-appointed Special Investigating Team. Later, the CBI was asked to step in following a huge public and political outcry over several deaths linked to the scam, some of them unexplained.
The issue of shortfall of CBI sleuths to take over the investigation was also raised like in the previous hearing but the bench told Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi that “you do it at the earliest as in the last 10 days nothing has happened.”
The Attorney General (AG) also sought three weeks to come back with a clear cut proposal on filling the vacancies of investigators in CBI, which requires a mandatory training of at least two years.
“You need trained investigators. It takes two years to train them and I don’t have a pool of investigators,” Rohatgi told the bench which posted the matter for further hearing on September 11.
