Cracking down on the accused in the NEET admission scam in Uttar Pradesh, the Special Task Force has arrested Dr Ritu Garg from Varanasi on Wednesday. Dr Ritu has been a brand ambassador of the Swachh Bharat Mission also. Director of Santushti Ayurvedic Medical College & Hospital, Mirzapur, Dr Ritu Garg had given admission to more than 100 students in her college who had not appeared in the NEET examination. As per the probe conducted by STF, Dr Ritu is accused of facilitating admission of non-deserving students by forging NEET merit list.
The UP STF produced Dr Ritu in the court after the arrest and she was sent to judicial custody till March 13. She was produced before magistrate Ramakant Prasad in the special anti-corruption court of Lucknow on Wednesday. The UPSTF probing the Ayush admission scam has arrested 14 people so far. The matter was brought to light in November last when the Ayush ministry in the union government came to know that hundreds of students were admitted in the UP Ayurvedic Colleges without appearing or even after being ranked low in the NEET merit list. The STF probe has revealed that 932 students were admitted without following the natural order of merit. The state government had also ordered CBI enquiry in this much hyped case.
The counselling for the admission to Homeopathy, Ayurveda and Unani colleges of UP was done in 2021 to select suitable candidates for 6797 seats against a total 7338 candidates. During the probe, 982 allotments were found as dubious and of these, nine did not appear in the NEET exam but were given admission. All the 982 students of the 2021 batch were suspended and debarred from taking exams slated this year.
It may be mentioned that STF had filed a charge sheet in this scam on February 14, naming former Director of Ayurveda SN Singh and 14 others. In the charge sheet, the Director of Ayurveda and the counselling in-charge along with 13 others were found guilty of forging the NEET merit list. The STF had filed a charge sheet in the Lucknow court against former Director of Ayurveda, SN Singh, counselling in-charge Umakant Yadav, former Senior Assistant Director Rajesh Singh and Junior Director Kailash Chandra Bhaskar. The names of various officials and staff members of UPTRON Powertronics handling the counselling work too figured in the charge sheet. These include Director of UPTRON Powertronics Kuldeep Verma, Assistant General Manager, Prabodh Singh and Technical Advisor Rupesh Srivastava. Director of private company V-3 Soft Solutions, Harshwardhan Tiwari, Saurabh Maurya, Director of Remark Tech. Indradev Mishra and Rupesh Ranjan, chairman of KVS Institute Vijay Yadav and its manager Dharmendra Yadav and a middleman Alok Trivedi too Were charge-sheeted. In the charge sheet filed by UP STF, these accused have been charged with section 420, 467, 468 and 471 of IPC.
