Court junks plea of 2 Accused in PGIMER MD seat scam, finds Prima Facie Case against 27
Chandigarh: In the latest development regarding the MD seat scam of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), the Special Judicial Magistrate, CBI, Chandigarh, Inderjeet Singh has recently rejected the discharge applications of two accused allegedly involved in the case.
Further, while considering the merits of the case, the court has found a prima facie case against all the 27 people who were accused of their alleged involvement in the nine-year-old scam, reports Tribune India.
December 6 has been fixed as the next date of hearing for framing charges.
Medical Dialogues had earlier reported that the conspiracy to leak the entrance exam question paper of MD, MS courses of PGI Chandigarh which were scheduled for November 10, 2012, was alleged executed by one Gurivi Reddy of Andhra Pradesh in collusion with Dr Gangadhar of Patna and Dr Kotesh of Hyderabad.
The trio allegedly had taken money from a few of the candidates in exchange for the exam papers. Modus Operandi- they had hired 14 dummy female candidates. The kingpin, Reddy had also booked these dummy students' tickets and arranged for their accommodation in Chandigarh. Two application forms for each of them were submitted under different names and their details were forged too.
On the day of the entrance examination, these dummy candidates were well equipped. Their clothes were customized to carry electronic gadgets. However, they were caught red-handed while passing on the question paper to Hyderabad and Patna for Dr. Kotesh and Dr. Gangadhar to solve it and communicate back the solved answers to the dummy via hi-tech devices installed in their clothes.
All of them were booked by CBI for allegedly being involved in cheating and leaking of the question paper using hi-tech devices during the PGI Chandigarh MD/MS examination.
Following this, a charge sheet was filed in 2014 by the CBI against 32 accused in the matter and a case was registered under sections 420 (cheating), 419 (cheating by personation), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 471 (using as genuine a forged 1[document or electronic record]) of the Indian Penal Code by the CBI in 2012.
On December 24, 2014, the CBI had filed a report against 26 persons under Section 173 of the CrPC. In the report, the names of 10 more persons were added, who were not charge-sheeted.
As per the latest media report by The Tribune India, the counsel appearing for the two accused, Rawat contended that since no recovery of alleged specially stitched shirts was made from the applicants, the applicants cannot be viewed as committing offences merely because mobile phones were recovered from them.
On the other hand, the public prosecutor, Narender Singh pointed out that while framing charges, only a prima facie case needed to be considered. At this outset, he further pointed out that oral and documentary evidence on record clearly established a prima facie case against the applicants.
After listening to the contentions of both the sides, the court rejected the discharge application of both the accused and noted, "The material on record in the form of documentary and oral evidence, which includes recovery memos, statement of witnesses recorded under Section 161 of the CrPC as alleged under Section 164, CrPC, provides a substantial ground to conclude the commission of prima facie offence punishable under Sections 419, 420, 467, 468, 471,120-B and 511 of the IPC by all accused."
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