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Quddusi moves court over leakage of phone transcripts

Ishrat Masroor Quddusi
Ishrat Masroor Quddusi

New Delhi : Retired Orissa High Court Judge Ishrat Masroor Quddusi, accused of graft in the Lucknow medical college scam case, on Wednesday moved a Delhi court seeking court-monitored investigation into leakage of transcripts of his alleged telephonic conversations in the case.

Quddusi’s counsel Vijay Aggarwal told Special Judge Manoj Jain that the transcripts of the alleged conversations as well as confidential report of a preliminary enquiry have been leaked to media.

The retired judge’s move comes a day after Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan filed a complaint against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra in the medical college scam case and requested five senior most apex court Judges, including the four rebel Judges, to hold an in-house inquiry into the matter.

The case is one of the major reasons for the rift between Chief Justice Dipak Misra and the four judges – Justices J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph – who criticised him last week at an unprecedented press conference.

Quddusi’s counsel Aggarwal requested the court to monitor the investigation of the case and to pass necessary orders regarding conducting of an inquiry into whether criminal misconduct has been committed by the CBI by leaking the documents of the case.

“…whether theft has been committed by the documents having been stolen, which documents are confidential in nature, and as to who are the erring persons responsible for the same,” the application read.

The counsel also requested the court to order an inquiry into whether any documents or conversations have been tampered with.

The counsel pointed out that report of the confidential document has not been supplied to the accused persons but it is in the hands of people outside the investigating agency.

“Such things raise grave suspicion and apprehension of interference of third parties in the investigation of the matter,” the counsel apprised the court.

The counsel pointed out that though the CBI is outside the ambit of RTI but the documents are in possession of “outsiders”.

The court has listed the matter for January 22 for further hearing.

Quddusi, B.P. Yadav, Palash Yadav, Bishwanath Agrawala, and Ram Dev Saraswat were arrested on September 20, 2017 by the CBI on the charge of helping Lucknow-based Prasad Institute that was barred from admitting medical course students for two years by the Medical Council of India (MCI).

The sixth accused in the case, Bhawana Pandey, was arrested on September 21.

Later all accused were granted bail in the case.

The CBI had registered a case of criminal conspiracy and under the Prevention of Corruption Act against the accused on September 19, 2017 and conducted raids at eight locations in Delhi, Lucknow, and Bhubaneswar.

The CBI FIR said B.P. Yadav and Palash Yadav were managing Prasad Educational Trust, which runs the Prasad Institute of Medical Sciences.

The institute is among 46 colleges barred by the government from admitting medical course students for two years (till 2019) because of substandard facilities and non-fulfilment of criteria.

It was alleged that the college had bribed some influential people, including Qudussi, to get a favourable order from the apex court which was hearing a case about its future as the college was running without a Medical Council of India (MCI) recognition.

In his complaint on Tuesday, Bhushan mentioned the tapped conversations purportedly between Quddusi, Biswanath Agarwala, a middleman, and B.P. Yadav of the Prasad Education Trust.

—IANS

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