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There have been widespread protests against the scam in Madhya PradeshA medical
school admission examinations scandal in India has turned into a veritable
whodunit with thousands of arrests, mysterious deaths and the suspected
involvement of top politicians and bureaucrats. Soutik Biswas travelled to
Madhya Pradesh to investigate.The call came late in the afternoon when he was
taking some foreign journalists to meet victims of clinical trials near the
central city of Indore.It was 13 July 2013, six days after the local police had
caught half a dozen students from a city hotel who they suspected were plotting
to rig medical school exams.Dr Anand Rai, a medical officer himself, has the
reputation of being a feisty - if sometimes, reckless - whistle-blower, so he
was helping the police with intelligence about how medical school exams were
being rigged in Madhya Pradesh."There was a man on the line threatening to kill
me. He said don't do this job any more," says Dr Rai, 38. The man rang off.Two
minutes later, the man called again. "Don't you give this number to the police.
You will pay for it, if you do," he said, before hanging up.Highest bidderDr
Rai promptly handed over the number to the police, who tracked the call to
Mumbai. A local police team went to Mumbai and arrested the caller.The man, an
assistant professor in a private medical college, turned out to be the
mastermind of what has now turned out to be one of India's biggest scandals,
involving the rigging of mainly medical school admissions. He told
investigators that Vyapam officials were complicit in the scandal. Vyapam is
the Hindi acronym for anoffice that conducts more than 50 examinations for
government jobs and medical school admissions in Madhya Pradesh.How
examinations were rigged:Candidates hire impersonators - medical students from
neighbouring states - who write their exam. Impersonators even appear for
physical education tests.Candidates pay 'scorers' - again medical students
themselves - who sit close to them during the examination and help them
cheat.Question papers are leaked and sold to candidates.Answer sheets are
rigged and higher marks given to the candidate.Unfinished answer sheets are
filled up later by teachers involved in the scam.The scale of the scandal
boggles the mind. Some 2,530 people have been accused since 2012. Around 1,980
people have been arrested; and 550 people are still sought by police. Twenty
courts in Madhya Pradesh are looking into 55 cases registered in connection
with the scandal.By one estimate, some 140,000 men and women have sat exams
conducted by Vyapam since 2007. The government says more than 1,000 "illegal
appointments" have been made through Vyapam, although whistle-blowers like Dr
Rai say the figure is much higher.Protesting students say the scam is the
'murder of meritocracy'Question papers were leaked, answer sheets rigged,
impersonators - themselves bright, young students - were hired to sit for
candidates, and seats sold to the highest bidder. Anything between 1m rupees
($15,764; £10,168) and 7m rupees was paid for a seat.Investigators have
examined nearly 10,000 photographs of students, many of which were forged by
impersonators. They have gleaned electronic information from at least five hard
drives, innumerable pen drives and laptops.That is not all. In a mysterious
twist, some 33 people - mostly accused in connection with the scam have died in
the past two years - raising suspicions and all kinds of conspiracy theories.
Ten of them have died in road accidents, something, which one investigator
says, needs further investigation to dispel doubts of foul play.'Deeply
frightening'It is difficult to link all these deaths to a scandal, but they
have, ironically, stirred India's notoriously Delhi-centric English-language
media to wake up and begin covering a story that has been brewing for two
years. The deaths, according to commentator Mukul Kesavan "are both strange and
deeply frightening".The roll call of those accused in the scandal is a
staggering list of who's who in Madhya Pradesh: a former ruling BJP minister,
the personal assistant of a high ranking official of the RSS (India's biggest
Hindu nationalist organisation), a top private medical school owner, aides of
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and state governor Ram Naresh Yadav, the
brother of a senior police official, top bureaucrats, policemen and a mining
magnate. No wonder, then, that the scandal has scarred the ruling BJP
government most.Vyapam conducts more than 50 professional exams in Madhya
PradeshWhistle-blower Anand Rai has received threatening calls for pursuing the
scandalA number of students have been held in connection with the scandal"This
is bigger than Ali Baba and Forty Thieves," admits Madhya Pradesh Home Minister
Babulal Gaur. "The scandal has given a bad name to the state. Our doctors are
suffering. If you are a doctor from Madhya Pradesh, people will ask 'are you
real or fake'."He is right.India's medical education system is one of the
largest in the world. There are 381 medical schools - both government-run and
private - associated with universities. More than 70,000 students turn out for
undergraduate and post-graduate exams every year. India produces some 30,000
doctors a year. Rigged medical school examinations taint the image of Indian
doctors. Last month, India's Supreme Courtordered more than 600,000 students to
retake the main medical school examsafter they found that the question paper
had been leaked.As Dr Rai tells the story, rigging medical school exams has
been going on for a while in the state. Successive governments have turned a
blind eye, although the ruling three-term BJP government is looking more
tainted than the others.He talks about 32 cases of cheating and impersonation
in medical schools that were filed by the police before the Vyapam scam
exploded in 2013. "It is a criminal nexus of politicians, bureaucrats, police
officers, students, teachers, agents, brokers - everyone is involved."He says
he first realised that something was wrong when he took his medical school exam
in 1994 and the paper was leaked. The exam was cancelled and held anew. A
medical college professor was accused of the leak. A year later, somebody
pumped 40 bullets into him and killed him.'Fishy'When Dr Rai appeared for the
post-graduate exam in 2005, he says he found a strange pattern in the list of
top 10 ranking candidates. "All the top 10 were sons and daughters and
relatives of successful officials and police officers. It was all very fishy.
Then I found that the top rankers even lived in the same medical school hostel.
We protested and demanded an investigation but nothing happened."Four years
later, Dr Rai, who works as a medical officer in a rusty government office and
has armed protection, received the first death threat on the phone.Chief
Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's aide is an accused in the scandalHe says he
had informed the police of a medical school exam question paper being leaked.
Some 40 parents and children were arrested. He says people from within Vyapam
leaked the paper, and changed it when the leak was discovered."Vyapam is the
proverbial tip of the iceberg. This is happening all over the country," says
Chandresh Bhushan, a retired judge who heads a three-member "special
investigative team" set up to monitor the investigation by the local
police."This is the most audacious and high-tech scandal I have come across.
One man, who was caught, was alone responsible for 300 bogus recruitments. Can
you believe that?"
