Godman, ex-UGC chief, and top govt officials at the centre of medical scam worth lakhs
The CBI probe features several high-profile names, including former UGC chief DP Singh and self-styled godman Ravi Shankar Maharaj and others.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has uncovered what it has called one of the biggest medical education scams in India. The case spans multiple states and involves top officials from the union health ministry, the National Medical Commission (NMC), middlemen, private college representatives, prominent educationists, and even a self-styled godman.
In its FIR, the CBI has named 34 people, including eight officials from the Health Ministry, one from the National Health Authority, and five doctors who were part of NMC inspection teams, reported news agency PTI.
High-profile names under CBI scanner
The investigation has implicated several well-known names in education and religious circles. Those named include:
- DP Singh, former UGC Chairman and current Chancellor of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)
- Ravi Shankar Maharaj (also known as Rawatpura Sarkar), a self-styled godman and Chairman of Rawatpura Institute of Medical Sciences and Research
- Suresh Singh Bhadoria, Chairman of Index Medical College in Indore
- Mayur Raval, Registrar of Gitanjali University
All four have been listed as accused in the FIR for their alleged involvement in bribing officials and manipulating inspections.
Bribes for favourable inspection reports
The CBI has so far arrested eight people, including three NMC doctors who allegedly took a ₹55 lakh bribe to issue a favourable inspection report to Rawatpura Institute of Medical Sciences in Naya Raipur.
According to the FIR, Ravi Shankar sought advance information about the inspection. Atul Kumar Tiwari, a director at the Rawatpura Institute, allegedly contacted Mayur Raval to illegally obtain this information. Raval reportedly demanded ₹25–30 lakh and shared the inspection date and names of assessors.
The agency also claimed that Ravi Shankar contacted DP Singh to get a favourable report. “Singh delegated the task to one Suresh,” the CBI said. PTI reported that there has been no response from Singh so far.
Health Ministry insiders leaked sensitive files
The scam reportedly originated within the health ministry when eight officials gave unauthorized access to confidential files to middlemen and college representatives in exchange for hefty bribes.
The officials clicked photographs of internal notings and shared them through intermediaries.
Now, the CBI has identified the accused health ministry officials as Poonam Meena, Dharamvir, Piyush Malyan, Anup Jaiswal, Rahul Srivastava, Deepak, Manisha, and Chandan Kumar.
The leaked information allowed medical colleges to prepare in advance for inspections, bribe assessors, use ghost faculty, admit fake patients, and tamper with biometric systems to project false compliance.
Ghost staff, fake patients and biometric fraud
One of the accused, Suresh Singh Bhadoria of Index Medical College, allegedly used cloned artificial fingers to create fake biometric attendance records for doctors.
The FIR cited by the news agency states: “Such prior disclosures have enabled medical colleges to orchestrate fraudulent arrangements, including the bribing of assessors to secure favourable inspection reports, the deployment of non-existent or proxy faculty (ghost faculty), and the admission of fictitious patients to artificially project compliance during inspections, and tampering with the biometric attendance systems to falsify.”
Bribes routed through hawala
The CBI has alleged that bribes worth several lakhs of rupees were exchanged between NMC teams, intermediaries, and representatives of private medical colleges. These payments were routed through hawala channels and used for various purposes, including, notably, the construction of a temple, the probe team said in the FIR cited by PTI.
The probe agency further claimed that Jeetu Lal Meena, a whole-time member of the NMC’s Medical Assessment and Rating Board, was in contact with Indra Bali Mishra, also known as 'Guruji' from Varanasi. Mishra reportedly acted as a conduit for Virender Kumar, an alleged middleman linked to several medical colleges in southern India.
Dummy faculty and southern India connection
The scam has deep roots across states, particularly in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. In Ananthpur, Hari Prasad worked as a fixer for several colleges, arranging dummy faculty for NMC inspections.
Hari Prasad’s partners—Krishna Kishore and Ankam Rambabu—allegedly collected bribes from directors of two southern colleges: Venkat from Gayatri Medical College, Visakhapatnam and Father Joseph Kommareddy of Father Colombo Institute of Medical Sciences, Warangal.
(With PTI inputs)
