CBI names 8 health ministry officials in med colleges probe

CBI names 8 health ministry officials in med colleges probe

 DurgeshNandan.Jha@timesofindia.com 05.07.2025

New Delhi : Eight officials of the health ministry have been named in an FIR filed by the CBI in its investigation into alleged bribery for favourable assessment of medical colleges. These officials allegedly facilitated unauthorised access to, and unlawful duplication and dissemination of, confidential files and sensitive information pertaining to the regulatory status and internal processing of medical colleges within the ministry. Further, the CBI FIR filed on June 30 states, they have been involved in manipulating the statutory inspection process conducted by the National Medical Commission (NMC) by preemptively disclosing the inspection schedules and identities of the designated assessors to the concerned medical institutions, well in advance of the official communication. 

Inspection of medical colleges is undertaken by the NMC on a periodic basis to assess whether they meet the minimum essential standards specified by the UnderGraduate Medical Education Board or the Post-Graduate Medical Education Board, as the case may be. Inspections are also undertaken before allowing medical institutions to increase seats and start new courses. According to the CBI FIR, prior disclosures enabled the medical colleges to orchestrate fraudulent arrangements, including the bribing of assessors to secure favourable inspection reports, the deployment of non-existent or proxy faculty (ghost faculty), and the admission of fictitious patients to artificially project compliance during inspections, and tampering with the biometric attendance systems to falsify presence records. 

Jitu Lal Meena, a joint director in the National Health Authority (NHA), three members of the inspection team of the National Medical Commission (NMC), some intermediaries and several representatives of private medical colleges have also been named in the FIR. This includes Tata Institute of Social Sciences chairman D P Singh, Gitanjali University registrar Mayur Raval, Rawatpura Institute of Medical Sciences and Research chairman Ravi Shankar ji Maharaj and

Index Medical College chairman Suresh Singh Bhadoria. Some people have also been arrested in the case. The agency has mentioned bribes running into lakhs of rupees being exchanged between NMC teams, intermediaries and representatives of medical colleges, being routed through hawala and used for multiple purposes.