Vyapam case: Supreme Court asks CBI to take over all 185 cases in 3 weeks

Dhananjay Mahapatra

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday talked tough for the first time since ordering CBI probe into all 185 Vyapam cases and 40 deaths allegedly related to it.

Out of the 185 cases, the STF and Special Investigation Team examined 55 cases and filed chargesheets in 49 cases, while investigation was pending in 81 cases of which 73 is related to cheating in examinations, solicitor general Ranjit Kumar told a bench of Chief Justice H L Dattu and Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy.

Kumar said the CBI had already taken up investigations into 12 deaths and registered preliminary enquiries (PEs) in 11 of them while in one, it had filed a reg ular case. He made two suggestions ­ one, the state police could probe the cases relating to cheating and, two, the CBI would look into those cases in which chargesheets were filed a little later, giving priority to uninvestigated cases.

The bench said, “We want to know when you will take over investigations into all 185 cases. We do not want the state police to look into any of the cases relating to Vyapam after we have ordered CBI probe.“ It then gave the agency three weeks to take over all Vyapam cases.

To CBI's complaint of lack of human resources, the bench asked the department of personnel and training's counsel to be present in court on August 7 for the purpose of expeditiously filling up vacancies in the CBI as well as providing additional hands to probe the scam. The court also told CBI that it could not be allowed to give lesser priority to those cases where the state police had already filed chargesheets. Kumar said the CBI would keep open the option of filing additional charge-sheets. The bench kept the matter for hearing on August 27.