The CBI Court in Patiala House, New Delhi recently dropped all criminal charges against ex-MCI president, Dr. Ketan Desai, after CBI lawyers submitted that “sanction” (under Section 197 CrPC) to prosecute Dr. Desai was denied by the Gujarat government. As well known across India, Desai was caught red-handed by CBI in 2010 allegedly for taking a huge bribe from a private medical college in exchange of granting MCI recognition to admit MBBS students. While Desai was in jail for almost 7 months before he was released on bail, MCI was dissolved under unrelenting public pressure. Almost 8 years later, all charges for corruption against Desai have now been dropped by CBI before the start of the trial on a flimsy and technical ground of “sanction” bringing utter shock to the entire medical community.
In order to look into this apparent dubious behavior by the CBI prosecutors, PBT had sought pertinent information (under RTI Act) in relation to CBI’s stance to drop all charges against Dr. Desai. The information sought included simple questions like why a routine “sanction” was denied by the government and why Gujarat government was approached to seek “sanction” instead of the central government as Desai was arrested as the MCI president and not as a government employee in Gujarat. Incredibly, CBI has refused to provide any answer to PBT’s questions with a bogus claim that RTI Act is “not applicable” to the CBI under Section 24 even though the said Act has categorically stated that CBI must provide information under RTI Act if the information pertains to “allegations of corruption” (see CBI response below). Of course, the criminal case CBI filed against Desai was exclusively related to “corruption”. PBT has already lodged an appeal with the Central Information Commission (CIC) against this blatantly biased denial of information under RTI Act. But a bigger question is why CBI is blatantly distorting truth to protect information about Desai? Is the BJP government trying to thwart justice from the most corrupt man in Indian medical history?
CBI-RTI Response- Ketan Desai (Oct, 2018)
