Former Madhya Pradesh Education Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Laxmikant Sharma was one of the 87 accused named in the Central Bureau of Investigation chargesheet in the Vyapam scam, on Thursday, 8 February, PTI reported.
Sharma, the key accused in the medical college admission multi-crore scam, was released on bail in December 2015 after spending 19 months in Central Jail in Bhopal.
The former MLA from Sironj is accused in seven cases related to the alleged scam in Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, famously known by its Hindi acronym ‘Vyapam’.
This is the second chargesheet filed by the CBI this year. On 16 January, the investigative agency had filed a chargesheet against 95 persons – 83 candidates, four Vyapam officials, and eight middlemen.
In November 2017, a special CBI court filed a chargesheet against 592 accused over irregularities in the 2012 pre-medical test. The CBI had said that the seats, which also included the state government’s quota, were not given to those who were in the merit list.
The Vyapam scam pertains to a series of irregularities in the MPPEB examinations, and has witnessed over 2,000 arrests since 2013.
The CBI, in October 2017, gave a clean chit to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan as there was no mention of ‘CM’ in the hard disk that was seized earlier in relation to the case.
Striking down senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh’s claims that the hard disk had been tampered with, the CBI said that there was no basis to Singh’s allegations. The agency, at the same time, also filed a chargesheet against 490 accused in the case.
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