HC seeks Centre, police reply on probe plea into illegalities in NEET 2016

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday sought reply of the Centre and the police on a plea seeking court-monitored CBI/SIT probe into the alleged illegalities in the National Eligibility Entrance Test, 2016 to admit students into postgraduate medical courses.

New Delhi, August 21

The Delhi High Court on Monday sought reply of the Centre and the police on a plea seeking court-monitored CBI/SIT probe into the alleged illegalities in the National Eligibility Entrance Test, 2016 to admit students into postgraduate medical courses.

A Bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar also issued notice to the National Board of Examination (NBE), the Medical Council of India, M/s Prometrics Private Ltd and the CBI on a plea which sought to hand over the case to the probe agency.

M/s Prometrics Private Ltd has sub contracted with CMS IT Services Private Ltd to hire engineers and site supervisors and other staff to prepare exam labs for conducting NEET PG examination at 43 centres all across India.

The Bench also expressed concern over the delay in concluding the investigation and said "this is a very serious matter, therefore, the authorities need to file their status report/response in one week."

The court has now listed the matter for further hearing on September 10.

The court was hearing the petition filed by Dr Anand Rai, who claims to be the whistleblower in Vyapam scam.

Rai, through his counsel Vaibhav Srivastava, submitted that the crime branch of Delhi Police were not competent to handle investigations such as the current case, which required technical expertise.

The petitioner said that at this point of time, Delhi Police is acting like "post office, still awaiting technical data from NBE and M/s Prometrics Ltd and asking Delhi Lt Governor to provide technical team for analysis of the technical data."

The CBI's special standing counsel Rajdeepa Behura said the Delhi Police crime branch is already investigating the matter in which an FIR has been lodged and charge sheet has been filed.

An FIR was lodged on February 1, 2017 against 11 persons and charge sheet was filed on July 9 this year under various sections of the IPC including 419, 420 and 120B and under the Information and Technology Act. PTI