Officials from the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) conducted searches at 16 locations in Hyderabad, Khammam, Karimnagar and other places across Telangana, under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on Thursday (June 22) in connection with the postgraduate medical seat-blocking scam.
During the search, officials said they recovered and seized unaccounted cash of ₹1.4 crore from the premises of Malla Reddy Institute of Medical Sciences. ED also froze ₹2.89 crore in a bank account of Malla Reddy Institute of Medical Sciences, where the cash collected against the medical PG admissions was suspected to have been deposited.
The ED had recorded a case of money laundering in February, following an FIR registered by the Matwada Police of Warangal. The complaint, filed by the then Registrar of the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS) against unknown persons, alleged that some agencies were involved in seat blocking in collusion with students/private institutions in Telangana and other States. It was also alleged that they were involved in obtaining relevant documents of candidates required for registration under KNRUHS
The probe by ED revealed that the University, during its own inquiries, had detected five candidates who informed that they had not even applied for counselling with the KNRUHS. “It was further revealed that seats were blocked using credentials of high-scoring PG NEET candidates from other States and after the mop-up round of counselling and the last date of admission, the seats were reported to the University as vacant and such vacant seats were declared as stray vacancies by the University,” said the officials. “They were then given to the respective private medical colleges for admission under the management/institutional quota. These seats were then sold at exorbitant premiums ranging anywhere between ₹1 crore to ₹2.5 crores,” officials said.
To curb the menace of seat blocking, the university had provisioned a penalty on the defaulting candidates. However, ED investigation revealed that a penalty was being paid by/on behalf of the seat-blocking candidates out of the premium collected for sale of the PG medical seats
The search operations also resulted in seizure of incriminating documents, digital devices and records of cash transactions running into hundreds of crores of rupees for the PG medical candidates as well as MBBS students. Further investigation in the matter is under progress.
