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The two-decade-old saga of corruption in the Indian Nursing Council (INC) has taken a new twist.
Last week, the Patiala House District Court in New Delhi framed charges against the Council’s sitting President, T Dilip Kumar, for conspiring with six nursing colleges to grant them recognition or feasibility certificates, by resorting to cheating and forging documents.
The six colleges facing conspiracy charges are: College of Nursing, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi; Shahid Udham Singh School of Nursing, Ratia, Haryana; Priyadarshini School of Nursing, Bengaluru; National School of Nursing, Bengaluru; Asram College of Nursing, Andhra Pradesh; and Baba Farid Medical Institute for Nursing, Punjab.
The court said that Kumar and now-deceased Vice-President of INC KD Varyani had dishonestly replaced the adverse Evaluation Proformas made by visiting ad hoc inspectors with Evaluation Proformas that said that the aforesaid training institutes were eligible for recognition or more seats, even though the reports of the ad hoc inspectors red-flagged concerns and shortcomings.
The adverse notings of the inspectors were removed from files and asked to be destroyed by Kumar and Varyani. However, INC staff turned in these controversial documents to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Files replaced
Through indentations and torn pieces in the file, it was forensically confirmed that these pages were replaced. Signatures of all officials on all file notings were verified through question-document analysis.
For example, in the case of College of Nursing, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Sarita Vihar, the ad hoc inspector had pointed out that there was shortage of faculty.
In the case of Priyadarshini School of Nursing, Bengaluru, it was noted that the hostel for female students was unsafe, and that the faculty was inadequate and inexperienced.
It took nine years for the court to frame charges against the seven accused, after the CBI filed its charge-sheet in 2009. For eight years, the sanction for prosecution of Kumar was not received and it was only in 2017 that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the President's office gave the go-ahead to try him.
In 2016, the Maharashtra Nursing Council had written to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office asking for removal of all INC office-bearers, alleging that they were involved in a fraud exceeding ₹225 crore.
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