Godhra NEET scam: Gujarat court rejects bail plea of accused, says ‘unfortunate’ that NTA not responded to police requests

The court noted the investigative officer’s submission during the argument of the bail application. It said that the investigating officer had submitted that the NTA had not handed over the OMR sheets of the suspected candidates despite repeated requests. “It is very unfortunate that the NTA had not supplied such crucial documentary evidence to the investigating agency,” the court said.

“The NTA has claimed that the examination was not compromised in any manner… there were security protocols… CCTV Surveillance at the examination centres. However, it is to be noted that in the present case, the alleged malpractice has been carried out by the accused persons immediately after the time of the examination. Therefore, on perusal of the entire facts, prima facie, the possibility of malpractice cannot be ruled out at these centres,” the court added.

The court also noted that the investigation had revealed that the “present accused, along with another accused, had also adopted the same malpractices during the previous years’ NEET UG examination”. Observing that the “entire education scandal has been hatched and conspired by the accused persons in a pre-planned manner,” the court considered the argument that co-accused Arif Vohra, Vibhor Anand Umeshwar Prasad Singh, and Parshuram Bindhnath Roy had contacted the NEET UG examination aspirants, hailing from far-off states like Jharkhand and Odisha and had finalised the deal with their parents.

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As part of the modus operandi, the candidates had chosen Godhra centre Jay Jalaram School to appear in the NEET UG Examination “as the platform of this mal-practice had been set up by the accused persons at Jay Jalaram School, Godhra with the help of the present applicant”.

District Government Pleader Rakesh Thakor told the court that during the accused’s interrogation, it came to light that on May 4, a day prior to the examination, a meeting was held in Sharma’s house along with co-accused Tushar Bhatt, where they had “shortlisted the names of candidates with whom their deal had been finalised”.

Although the meeting was recorded by the CCTV Cameras installed in Sharma’s house, the digital video recording (DVR) has been formatted, and Sharma is also accused of allegedly “trying to destroy the evidence”.

The court observed, “It transpires that the DVR has been recovered by the investigating officer and has been sent to the FSL, the report of which is awaited. Moreover, the original handwritten list of shortlisted candidates was also destroyed (by Sharma). However, the Xerox copy has been recovered from his possession… It also transpires that, on May 6, after the completion of examination, the present applicant, along with Bhatt and accused Vohra, had met at Hotel Sahyog and Hotel Grand Ekta because by then the police had already made some interrogation with Bhatt… the CCTV footage of both the hotels have been recovered by the investigating officer.”

Taking a severe view while rejecting the bail plea, the court said, “Imagine a person who has played fraud with the system becomes a Doctor and a person who is the principal of an educational institution is a part of such fraud, which would be deleterious to the society. If the competition is not fair, there remains no option for hardworking, poor, middle-class students hailing from small towns who have put everything at stake to fulfil their dreams. It is also a societal danger posed by candidates who might become doctors through fraudulent means.”