On Wednesday, a special court in Bhopal directed to lodge cases against former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh, MP Congress Committee chief Kamal Nath, Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia and Vyapam scam whistle blower Prashant Pandey.
The special court issued order Shyamala Hills police station in Bhopal to register a case of forging documents and criminal conspiracy against all the three Congress leaders and whistle blower Prashant Pandey under Sections 465, 468, 469, 471, 472, 474 and 120-B of IPC. The special court also asked the police to come up with a detailed report before the court on November 13.
The special court pronounced the verdict while hearing a petition filed by advocate Santosh Sharma on September 24. In the petition filed by Santosh Sharma in his personal capacity, he claimed that the Congress leaders along with whistleblower produced forged evidences before the High Court and the Supreme Court. He also accused them of cooking story in order to tarnish the image of public servants for their own political purposes. Santosh Sharma also accused the Congress leaders of trying to “mislead and manipulate” the probe being conducted by STF, SIT and CBI.
Santosh Sharma’s petition has come as a counter petition filed by the Congress leader- Digvijay Singh- on September 19. In his petition, Digvijay Singh had demanded prosecution of the incumbent MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, former CM and present union minister Uma Bharti, five police officers of Madhya Pradesh and others for tampering the evidence stored in the hard disk seized in July 2013 from Nitin Mohindra’s who is the main accused in Vyapam scam. He also submitted a hard disc and 27,000 pages of documents in connection with Vyapam scam. Digvijay Singh claimed that the hard disk submitted by him is the original and was submitted in the court for the first time.
However, Forensic Science Laboratory in Hyderabad said that the hard disk was not tampered and CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan was also given clean chit by the apex court two years ago. Therefore, the BJP leaders are saying that the Congress is doing all this drama to mislead the court and people. State Public Relations Minister Narottam Mishra said, “When the highest court of the land has accepted that there wasn’t any tampering and a number of investigative agencies have also not found any merit in the allegations of the Congress, it is surprising why the leaders are persisting with it.” Interestingly, Digvijay Singh himself is out on bail in Vyapam scam.
It has been a fashion that whenever elections are around the corner in Madhya Pradesh, opposition parties start shouting about Vyapam scam. As the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections are around the corner, so the sudden outrage of opposition parties over Vyapam scam is quite understandable.