JOIN USDr Arun Sharma, dean of Jabalpur-based Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Medical College, who was assisting the police in the Vyapam scam probe, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Delhi on Sunday.
The scam has now reportedly claimed the lives of at least 40 people involved in it.
These include an investigative reporter of a TV channel, who died on Saturday soon after interviewing the parents of a deceased girl accused of being involved in the huge admission and recruitment scam in the Madhya Pradesh Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal (Vyapam), reportedly involving politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen.
Sharma, 64, had checked into the Uppal Hotel near IGI Airport in south-west Delhi’s Dwarka on Saturday, and was scheduled to fly to Tripura on Sunday morning for an inspection as a member of Medical Council of India.
The dean was assisting the Special Task Force of the Delhi Police probing the Vyapam scandal by providing documents on fake medical entrance examinees in state-run colleges, said the police.
A senior police officer said his son has been contacted. He told the police his father was diabetic. According to the police, the victim wanted to be woken up on Sunday morning. “But when nobody responded to repeated knocks on the door, the hotel staff entered the suite with a duplicate key and found his body,” he said. “An empty bottle of alcohol and some medicines were also found in his suite.”
The police said prima facie no external injury was seen on the body, which was rushed to Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital around 10 am.
Doctors here said a three-member board has been constituted for Sharma's post-mortem examination — medical examiners from Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, Maulana Azad Medical College and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital or Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital. The procedure, scheduled for Monday morning, will be recorded, said a doctor. Incidentally, the burnt body of another dean of the same college, Dr D K Sakalle, who was looking into the Vyapam scam, had been found in his home last year.
Calling the spate of deaths “extremely intriguing and deeply suspicious”, the Congress on Sunday demanded a Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe into the matter.