In a piece of shocking recent news, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has uncovered what they are calling the biggest scam in India’s medical education system.
The case involves massive bribes to manipulate inspections of private medical colleges and grant them illegal approvals. It spans multiple states and includes officials from the National Medical Commission (NMC), the Union Health Ministry, private colleges, educationists, a self-styled godman, and middlemen.
People Under Scanner
The FIR registered by the CBI includes 34 individuals—eight from the Health Ministry, one from the National Health Authority, and five doctors from NMC inspection teams.
Big names caught in the investigation include:
D.P. Singh, former UGC chairman, now Chancellor at TISS
Ravi Shankar Maharaj, Chairman of Rawatpura Institute of Medical Sciences and a self-styled godman
Suresh Singh Badoria, Chairman, Index Medical College, Indore
Mayur Rawal, Registrar, Gitanjali University
How the Scam Came to Light
The scam surfaced when the CBI arrested eight people, including three NMC doctors, for allegedly accepting a ₹55 lakh bribe to approve Rawatpura Institute of Medical Sciences in Nayaraipur.
Sources say the college director, Atul Kumar Tiwari, contacted Mayur Rawal to obtain inspection details. Rawal was said to have demanded ₹25–30 lakh and shared the date and names of assessors.
Ravi Shankar already had news about the upcoming inspection and is believed to have contacted D.P. Singh to secure a favorable report.
Inside Help From the Health Ministry
The scam appeared to involve Health Ministry officials leaking confidential information to middlemen in exchange for hefty bribes. They allegedly photographed internal documents and passed them on to college representatives.
Those accused include Poonam Meena, Piyush Malyan, Anup Jaiswal, Deepak, Manisha, Dharamvir, Rahul Srivastava, and Chandan Kumar.
Colleges used this leaked information to pretend everything was in place during inspections by hiring ghost faculty, admitting fake patients, bribing assessors, and even tampering with biometric systems. One of the accused, Suresh Singh Badoria, took it to another level—he allegedly used cloned artificial fingers to fake attendance.
According to various news portals, the FIR noted:
“Such prior disclosures have enabled medical colleges to orchestrate fraudulent arrangements, including the bribing of assessors to secure favorable 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 Used to Build Temples, Routed Through Hawala
The network ran deep across India. The bribe money was moved through hawala channels and used for different things, mainly temple construction.
In a surprising turn, Jitulal Meena, a member of NMC’s Medical Assessment and Rating Board, is said to have used ₹75 lakh in bribe money to build a Hanuman temple in Rajasthan. He was linked to Varanasi-based Indra Bali Mishra, also known as Guruji. Mishra is said to have acted as a middleman for Virender Kumar, who was reportedly connected to several medical colleges in South India.
In the South, Hariprasad acted as a fixer—allegedly collecting ₹50 lakh from Gayatri Medical College, Andhra Pradesh, and ₹4 crore from Father Colombo Institute in Telangana for arranging dummy faculties for NMC inspections.
What’s Next
The CBI has said the investigation is still ongoing and that it plans to take strict action. So far, 40 colleges have come under the scanner, with more likely to emerge.
The scam has put private medical colleges under the spotlight, raising serious questions about the authenticity of India’s regulatory system, especially among students and parents.
(Rehash/Pooja Bansal/MSM/SE)