New Delhi: New evidence suggesting tampering of evidence in the probe of the Vyapam admission and recruitment scandal in Madhya Pradesh has come to light. The evidence was tampered to shield the powerful, including the office of the chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, alleges the opposition Congress party.
The Congress has said that it will give the evidence to the special investigation team (SIT) probing the scandal that shook the state last year.
Vyapam is an autonomous body in Madhya Pradesh that conducts recruitment tests for various posts as well as admission to professional courses. Last year, when massive irregularities were found in the conduction of the examinations, it rocked the government. An SIT was formed to investigate the matter which has found that proxies appeared in the examinations with the connivance of Vyapam officials and middlemen.
The opposition party in the state, Congress has alleged that the data retrieved from the arrested system analyst Mahendra's computer mentioned ‘CM' in a spreadsheet he maintained. Mahendra kept a record of names of candidates, their roll numbers and those who recommended the candidates. It was the recovery of the sheet that resulted in his arrest.
Leaders from the Congress party claim there were 40 entries under the name ‘CM' in the spreadsheet recovered from Mahendra, but these were later replaced with ‘M/s' and ‘Umabharatiji'.
The matter is being investigated by a Special Task Force that is assisting the SIT in the probe. The whole matter is being monitored by High Court.
Digvijaya Singh, former chief minister of MP and Congress leader alleged that the STF itself is working to save the culprit and the computer's hard disk was tampered with. He said that the hard disk recovered from Mahendra's computer was sent to state forensic lab in Gujarat with this purpose only. He also claims to have the original list and intends to give it to SIT.
The party also alleges that STF has suppressed the evidence of manipulation of domicile certificates.
The STF has registered cases against 129 people based on its investigation. High profile people like former education minister Laxmikant Sharma, his OSD O P Shukla, former examination controller Pankaj Trivedi, mining baron Sudhir Sharma have already been arrested.
Governor Ram Naresh Yadav's son Shailesh has also been named as accused by STF on the basis of statements of arrested students and evidence from the spreadsheet.
