HYDERABAD: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday, in a probe of PG medical seat scam under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), seized unaccounted cash of Rs 1.4 crore and froze accounts containing Rs 2.89 crore of the Malla Reddy Institute of Medical Sciences.
The move comes after a series of raids at 16 locations in Hyderabad, Khammam and Karimnagar, among other places, against the backdrop of the ED registering a case in February based on an FIR filed by the Matwada police in Warangal.
The FIR was registered on a complaint by the then registrar of the Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS) against unknown persons, alleging that agencies were blocking seats in collusion with students or private institutions and in obtaining relevant documents of candidates required for registration under KNRUHS
The probe revealed that the university, in its inquiry, detected five candidates who had not even applied for counselling with the KNRUHS.
The ED investigation found that seats were blocked using credentials of high-scoring PG NEET candidates from other states, following which they were declared to the university as vacant after the last date of counselling.
The seats were then given to respective private medical colleges for admission under the management quota and sold at exorbitant premiums, ranging from Rs 1 crore to Rs 2.5 crore.
Despite the KNRUHS having provisioned penalties on defaulting candidates, the ED found that the penalty was paid from the premium collected from the sale of seats.
The ED seized incriminating documents, digital devices and records of cash transactions running into hundreds of crores of rupees from PG medical candidates, as well as MBBS students.
