Lucknow:
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been given two more months to complete its probe into the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) murders in Uttar Pradesh which are allegedly linked to the multi-crore irregularities in the implementation of the centre's National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).
The order was given by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court today after the agency sought more time to complete its investigations. The High Court had handed over the probe to the CBI in July last year.
In October 2010, Dr Vinod Arya, the Chief Medical Officer of the Family Welfare Department was killed. Six months later, the man who replaced him, Dr BP Singh, was murdered. In June 2011, a man who had worked for them and had been arrested for their deaths, Yogendra Singh Sachan was found dead at a Lucknow jail.
The police alleged that Dr Sachan was worried that both his bosses were about to expose the financial crimes he had reportedly helped construct.
Babu Singh Kushwaha, the minister handling the department during the period the NRHM scam came to light and the CMOs were murdered, was forced to resign in April last year. He was expelled from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in November and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last week.
The department had access to Rs 3,500 crores a year to provide better medical services for villages under the NRHM scheme which is being implemented by 72 CMOs and nodal officers from other state government departments.
Much of the money for the scheme was squandered by bureaucrats and other officers who handed inflated contracts to suppliers of medicines and equipment. This is being probed separately by the CBI and it conducted raids in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi, last week as part of its investigations.