MCI, DCI Officials Booked by CBI for leaking inspection details of medical colleges, clearing management quota seats
New Delhi: Some employees of the erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI), now National Medical Commission (NMC), and the Dental Council of India (DCI) have been booked by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection to the allegations of leaking information regarding the inspections of two medical colleges of the Pacific University.
Apart from these, the registrar of the Udaipur-based University has also been booked by the agency.
The case concerns the clearing of the management quota seats of Pacific Institute of Medical Sciences and Pacific Medical College and Hospital from the monitoring section of erstwhile MCI, now NMC. Further allegations were regarding the leak of sensitive information regarding the inspection dates for the colleges.
Back in 2020, the agency had conducted a preliminary probe against Sandeep Kumar, the clerk of the MCI's monitoring section at that time, DCI clerk Khizar Abbas; and Sharad Kothari, registrar of the Pacific Institute of Medical Sciences and the Pacific Medical College and Hospital.
Medical Dialogues had reported back in 2018 that several medical aspirants had approached the Rajasthan High Court and alleged that despite having scored well in the Private Colleges Pre Medical Test (PCPMT) 2015 conducted by MDS University, Ajmer they were not given admission by any of the private medical colleges. Instead, candidates, who had not even appeared for PCPMT, were granted admissions, and others with a low percentage in their Class XII boards had been allowed to appear for PCPMT.
Back then, the HC had directed the CBI to probe the allegations against the private medical institutions who had allegedly admitted illegible candidates in the UG courses, MBBS and BDS.
CBI had back then booked an FIR against the then registrar of the Pacific University, principal of the Pacific Institute of Medical Sciences (Udaipur), Former Principal of the NIMS Medical College and Hospital (Jaipur), coordinator of the Private Colleges Pre Medical Test- 2015, Registrar of the Rajasthan University of Health Sciences and then Chairman of Rajasthan UG (Medical and Dental) Admission Board.
As per the latest media report by The Hindu, in the FIR, CBI had also named Javed Khan, the assistant programmer of MCI at that time, Sachin Gupta, Sushil Kumar and his relative Bal Govind.
The FIR mentioned that the CBI found out that the accused had conspired together for clearing the management quota seats, which had been admitted in excess in the PMCH (36 seats) and PIMS (60 seats) in the academic year of 2016-2017.
The agency had also found one Santosh Kumar (since dead), who had worked with the MCI and he had contacted Sandeep for this matter. As per CBI, this Sandeep was regularly connected with the registrar and would talk to him via Sachin, who also collected bribes on the behalf of Santosh.
Apart from this, the agency also found out that the accused persons had also engaged into a conspiracy with the registrar for sharing sensitive information regarding the inspection dates of the medical colleges.
The accused named Javed had access to the MCI database server and Khizar used to obtain such information about various medical colleges from him.
In the FIR, it has also been mentioned that the information obtained from Javed used to pass on to Santosh Kumar and Sushil Kumar.
As per CBI, the registrar had bribed Santosh with Rs 5 lakh through his friend, Sushil Kumar. Santosh had also received around Rs 2.94 lakh in the bank account during the academic year 2016-2017. Another Rs 3 lakh had been given to Khizar.
