New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) this week carried out raids at 15 locations across 10 states in connection with alleged large-scale corruption in medical college inspections.
This comes after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) busted the alleged syndicate and filed a charge sheet in a Raipur court in August. The charge sheet claimed a nexus of government officials, agents, chancellors and registrars of prominent universities was involved in the exchange of bribes for favourable inspection reports.
The agency unearthed systemic flaws in the inspection of medical colleges, with confidential information such as dates of inspections and inspecting teams being leaked to colleges ready to pay bribes, through a “trusted” middleman in Gujarat.
At the centre of the case is Raipur’s Shri Rawatpura Sarkar Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (SRIMSR). Inspections of medical colleges are carried out by the Medical Assessment & Rating Board (MARB), a statutory body under the National Medical Commission (NMC).
Taking cognisance of the CBI’s FIR and charge sheet, the ED raided 15 locations linked to colleges and individuals running them across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Sources in the agency said seven of the premises searched were mentioned in the CBI’s FIR.
The CBI has charged 12 accused, including the Raipur medical institute, its chairman, controversial godman Ravi Shankar Ji Maharaj, and director Atul Kumar Tiwari. Ravi Shankar Ji Maharaj was described as the “prime mover and guiding force of the conspiracy”, while Tiwari handled the operational side of the operation.
The Registrar of Udaipur’s Geetanjali University, Mayur Raval, who allegedly facilitated the flow of confidential information, has been marked as ‘accused number 1’ by the agency.
R. Randeep Nair, who was the project head of a private firm contracted by the National Medical Commission, has been listed as accused number two in the chargesheet.
Both of them, along with four others, including three assessors who inspected the Raipur college on 30 June and submitted a favourable report allegedly in exchange for a bribe, were arrested by the CBI in July this year.
“Shri Ravi Shankar Ji Maharaj was the prime mover and guiding force of the conspiracy. Acting in consultation with him, Shri Atul Kumar Tiwari approached Shri Mayur Raval for procurement of advance confidential information regarding the date of assessment and names of assessors,” the agency alleged in the charge sheet.
“He approved and directed the negotiation of the bribe demand from Rs 50 lakh to 30 lakh. Further, Shri Ravi Shankar Ji Maharaj instructed Shri Atul Kumar Tiwari and Dr Atin Kundu to make necessary preparations for the inspection, including arranging ghost faculty and fake patients to meet the NMC requirements,” it added.
Unauthorised access, a ‘Gujarat middleman’
The case came to light when the CBI received information about alleged large-scale collusion between Union health ministry officials and the NMC, as well as middlemen and management of medical colleges, leading to tampering with the inspection process.
The agency was tipped off that a few health ministry employees, including one named Chandan Kumar, were allegedly disseminating confidential information such as the status of applications and proposed inspection periods to Geetanjali University’s Raval, who passed on the information to colleges.
Based on this information and inspection of the Raipur medical college on 30 June, the CBI laid a trap and arrested the assessors and their aides, and recovered a total of Rs 55 lakh in cash.
According to the chargesheet, a copy of which ThePrint has seen, Raval used Randeep Nair, the project head of Techinfy Solutions Pvt Ltd, who was deployed with the NMC.
The agency alleged that Nair had unauthorised access to the assessment module of the NMC during the relevant period, and he passed on information related to scheduled inspections and lists of inspectors to colleges.
The CBI further claimed that this access continued despite an April meeting decision that no one from the system integrator or the private firm running the portal would have access to either the application or assessment module. The assessment module came into effect from 23 May this year.
According to established MARB procedure outlined in the charge sheet, a medical college’s application for an increase in seats for a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, or approval for starting a college, is first scrutinised by an under-secretary rank officer of the health ministry.
A deputy secretary then assesses the application based on the clearance or deficiencies flagged by the first officer. After clearance by the deputy secretary, the application reaches the MARB director, who either initiates the process, assigning a “due date” by which the assessment would be complete, or issues a show-cause notice to the college management in case of deficient documents.
According to the CBI charge sheet, while only MARB Director Anupam Anish Chauhan had authorised access to the assessment portal, Nair had unauthorised access to the default email address used for communication with assessors and colleges to be inspected.
“Shri R. Randeep Nair, Project Head, Techinfy Solutions Pvt. Ltd., unauthorisedly accessed the Assessment Module of NMC using SITEAM user credentials. By doing so, he extracted confidential information relating to upcoming inspections of medical colleges, including the probable/possible dates of assessment and Unique Reference Numbers of assessors pertaining to SRIMSR, Raipur,” the agency alleged in the charge sheet.
‘Rs 50 lakh for inspection date 48 hours in advance’
The CBI said in the charge sheet that the Rawatpura medical college started in 2024 with an approved intake of 150 students in the MBBS course and applied to increase its capacity to 250 for the 2025-26 academic session.
The final application went through lower-rung officers of the health ministry to the MARB director, who, on 25 June, scheduled the assessment for 30 June.
The same day, as per established procedure, four assessors—Dr Manjappa C.N., Dr P Rajni Reddy, Dr Ashok Shelke and Dr Chaitra M.S.—received an invitation for the assessment of colleges for an increase in seats in one of the states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand.
According to MARB norms, assessors receive the exact name of the college only the night before the inspection and colleges are informed about the scheduled visit only on the morning of the inspection. Moreover, the college should not be informed about an inspection and the identity of assessors, and the assessors should not be informed about the college they are supposed to inspect before the stipulated time.
However, both these elements were compromised, the CBI alleged in the charge sheet.
The agency alleged that the Rawatpura college management sourced the information about the inspection at least four days before the scheduled date, and the identity of assessors at least three days before.
The conspiracy, the agency alleged, began on 22 May, when one of the college directors, Atul Kumar Tiwari, approached Dr Pankaj Nathavani of Gujarat-based Vitality Healthcare. Nathavani allegedly directed him to Swami Bhaktavatsal Dasji of the Gandhinagar-based Swaminarayan Institute of Medical Sciences & Research (SIMSR).
Tiwari allegedly approached him on 26 May to procure confidential information about the college’s assessment in advance. Bhaktavatsal Dasji allegedly sought Rs 50 lakh to share the inspection date 48 hours in advance, along with assistance in overcoming scrutiny and obstacles to clear 250 seats.
Tiwari relayed the quotation of around Rs 2 to Rs 3 lakh per seat to Ravi Shankar Ji Maharaj, the chairman of the Rawatpura medical college, and also informed that one person “from Gujarat” had good contacts in the NMC and could get the job done. He was referring to Raval but did not name him. Tiwari further said that Bhaktavatsal Dasji himself had paid Rs 50 lakh for his college.
However, both Ravi Shankar and Tiwari considered Rs 2 crore for 100 seats unaffordable. Hence, they allegedly agreed to negotiate and bring the amount down to Rs 30 lakh.
The negotiations between Tiwari and Ravi Shankar, and between Tiwari and Raval, regarding the reduction of the bribe amount, were conducted over three days. During this time, Raval allegedly agreed to share the inspection date and names of assessors 48 hours in advance for Rs 30 lakh.
Tiwari received the first tip-off about the inspection on 20 June, when Raval allegedly informed him that it would take place in the last week of June, which he subsequently passed on to Ravi Shankar.
Raval then informed Tiwari on 26 June about the inspection being scheduled on 30 June and that a show-cause notice was issued to the college for appearance on 1 July.
Raval could not deal with the notice as the deal was only to get inspection information, which would have been done in the overall package of Rs 35 lakh, Tiwari allegedly informed Ravi Shankar.
The agency has included extracted WhatsApp conversations between Tiwari and Ravi Shankar in the chargesheet.
On 26 June, Raval allegedly spoke to Nair for confidential information around 10.40 pm and relayed the information to Tiwari soon after at 11.05 pm regarding the inspection on 30 June.
The next day, Tiwari allegedly informed Ravi Shankar that the identities of the assessors would be shared that night.
The agency claimed that Nair continued to use the MARB’s assessment module illegally on 26-27 June, which was allegedly established through audits of the logs.
Upon learning of the inspection, the college management brought in dummy faculty from outside, disguised as college faculty. To establish patient flow, the college management arranged for the transportation of villagers on the inspection day from nearby villages, who were paid Rs 150 each.
“These acts were intended solely to mislead the NMC assessors into believing that SRIMSR fulfilled the requisite infrastructure and manpower norms for increasing MBBS seats from 150 to 250. By projecting ghost faculty as permanent staff and showing villagers as admitted patients, the accused persons created a false compliance scenario to secure a favourable assessment report,” the agency alleged in the charge sheet.
The agency also alleged in the charge sheet that the college management influenced the assessors and paid a sum of Rs 55 lakh to Sathisha A., who allegedly collected a bribe on behalf of Dr Manjappa C.N. and Dr Chaitra M.S.
The payment was made through a hawala channel organised by a former trustee of Shri Rawatpura Sarkar Lok Kalyan Trust, which runs the college.
However, as the husband of Chaitra M.S. came to collect the bribe amount from Sathisha’s residence in Bengaluru, the CBI nabbed him in his car with the bribe amount of Rs 16.62 lakh, the agency submitted in the chargesheet.
A subsequent search at Sathisha’s residence resulted in the recovery of the remaining Rs 38.38 lakh of the bribe amount, it further alleged in the document.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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