Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Cabinet minister Kailash Vijayvargiya on Sunday stoked a controversy by saying - "Is a journalist bigger than me?" - reportedly while commenting over journalist Askhya Singh's death case who passed away yesterday, in Jhabua after having interviewed parents of a girl who had been found dead near railway tracks after her name figured in the mysterious Vyapam scam.

However, while speaking to news agency ANI, Vijayvargiya backtracked and claimed that a joke that he had cracked was later taken out of the context.

“My statement has been twisted, I was joking with some other journalist, it was not about late Akshay Singh,” he said.

He further said, “I did not say that about late Akshay Singh, I strongly condemn this.”

According to a footage aired by an English news channel, Vijayvargiya was seen making the above statement in the presence of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who has assured a fair probe into the sudden death of Akshay Singh.

While expressing grief over the jounalist's death, Chouhan has already agreed to demands of late Akshay's sister to send the reporter's viscera samples to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi for examination. But it seems that the MP CM's colleague is unfazed with the unfortunate demise of the journalist investigation the mysterious Vyapam scam.

On Saturday, Akshay Singh suddenly took ill and died in Meghnagar near Jhabua town.

The journalist was rushed to the civil hospital and later to a private hospital, but doctors failed to revive him. From there he was taken to another hospital in nearby Dahod in Gujarat, where he was declared brought dead.

(With Agency inputs)