The CBI conducted raids at two houses of a sitting Allahabad High Court judge, among other locations in Lucknow and Delhi-NCR, on Friday in connection with a medical college scam.
Apart from the houses of the sitting judge of the Lucknow bench, the CBI also raided the house of retired Odisha High Court judge I.M. Quddusi. The agency said they had seized documents that would be helpful in the investigation.
Quddusi had allegedly promised some medical colleges that were barred from admitting students to MBBS courses to influence an order in the Supreme Court in their favour.
A CBI source said they had taken written permission a few months ago from the then Chief Justice of India, Rajan Gogoi, to raid the house of the sitting high court judge.
The Medical Council of India had barred 46 medical colleges, including Prasad Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, in 2016 from admitting students to MBBS courses. These colleges allegedly took the help of some journalists, socialites and fixers to get the MCI order quashed in the Supreme Court.
Following a report of the MCI, the Union health and family welfare ministry had also barred the colleges, included one run by the Prasad Education Trust, on June 8, 2016, from admitting students. By that time, 61 students had already been admitted by PIMS.
B.P. Yadav, the college owner, moved the Supreme Court against the MCI order and a Supreme Court-mandated oversight committee approved 150 MBBS seats for 2016-17 to some of the colleges. However, the MCI and the oversight committee didn’t give approval to run the courses in 2017-18.
The CBI had arrested Quddusi, socialite Bhawana Pandey, conduit Biswanath Agrawala, B.P. Yadav, his son Palash Yadav and Ramdev Saraswat, an alleged hawala dealer, in September 2017, a day after registering a case of criminal conspiracy and corruption.