Whistleblowers in the Vyapam Scam open up to The Hindu about their role in exposing the scam and the aftermath.

Prashant Pandey

Prashant Pandey has been with the Intelligence Bureau since 2005 and was later part of the Madhya Pradesh Special Task Force. In 2012, when an Income Tax raid was ordered against government staff suspected of involvement in the medical entrance examinations, Pandey seized the electronic databases of the suspects. When stories of the Vyapam scam began to appear in the press, the government suspected Pandey of leaking details. That was when the threats began. Pandey accuses Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of being linked with the scam, and claims he has incriminating proof that he has shared with the Court. “Hardly 10-15 per cent of the scam has been exposed. Members of the judiciary are implicated too. It is thanks to God and the STF that I am still alive,” he told The Hindu. On May 7, 2015, a truck hit the car Pandey’s wife was driving. “Thankfully my wife and four-year-old child survived, but my grandmother is still in hospital.”

Pandey is sure he is under constant surveillance. But that is the price you pay for exposing those in power.

Anand Rai

The past decade has been a non-stop battle for Indore-based ophthalmologist Anand Rai. “When I took the medical entrance test in 2005, I discovered that the top 10 candidates at the Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal were relatives of influential people,” said the 38-year-old. Rai was a student leader and soon got in touch with two doctors, Deepak Yadav and Jagdish Sagar, who turned out to be the alleged kingpins of the scam. In 2007, Rai saw Deepak and another student Santosh [now in jail] paste photographs on application forms. “I realised Sagar was also involved and I started probing.” In July 2009, Rai lodged a complaint alleging that impersonators took the tests. “From 2011 to March 2013, I gathered information about 300 impersonation cases, but no FIR was filed. In July 2013, I tipped off the police.” Over six people were arrested and the accused revealed they worked for Sagar. When Sagar threatened Rai, he moved a PIL before the Indore Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. “The police now provide protection, but only for eight hours.”

Ashish Chaturvedi

Ashish Chaturvedi is a student of social work. In 2009, Chaturvedi met Brijendra Raghuvanshi, a student of GR Medical College in Gwalior and a top ranker in the entrance exam. “About 18 months into medical college, he started failing his exams. That made me suspicious,” says Chaturvedi. It wasn’t Raghuvanshi’s case but Chaturvedi’s mother’s death in 2011 due to shoddy treatment for cancer that urged him to turn whistle-blower. ““The medical profession that is supposed to give life is taking lives in Madhya Pradesh. I realised that like my mother, thousands of mothers were dying because of unqualified doctors who had passed exams fraudulently. The Vyapam scam has become my life’s mission.” In 2012, Chaturvedi was kidnapped by a gang of medical students, and later assaulted with cricket stumps. “The police recorded it only as an ordinary fight,” he told The Hindu. In the last six years, there have been 14 murder attempts on Chaturvedi. The CBI’s entry has infused hope in him that the culprits will be brought to book, including Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan whom he accuses of involvement.