The Supreme Court on Thursday held the charge against the kingpin of the Bihar toppers’ scandal Bachha Rai, who secured top ranks for students in Class 12 examinations in connivance with the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB), to be too “grave” and turned down the conditional bail granted in his favour by the Patna High Court on February 14.
Approaching the apex court against the HC order, the Bihar Government had relied on its chargesheet and subsequent investigation to highlight the role of Amit Kumar alias Bachha Rai who was the mastermind of the entire scandal. In all, there were 32 accused, which also included BSEB Chariman lalkeshwar Prasad Singh and his wife and former JD(U) legislator Usha Sinha.
The apex Bench, headed by Justice NV Ramana, set aside the HC order which allowed Rai to walk out on bail if the State police failed to frame charges against Rai within a month. Rai was the Secretary-cum-Principal of VR College at Vaishali, the institution which came under scanner after students who topped in the Bihar Board Exams across all streams were found to have no knowledge of their subjects. Police investigation revealed that Rai colluded with BSEB to get exam centre for select students allotted at his institution where irregularities were committed in evaluation of answer sheets by which these students scored high marks.
This institution thus produced toppers every year. But last year, when some of the toppers were interviewed by journalists, to their horror they discovered that one of the toppers termed political science as “prodigal science” and described it as a subject where cooking is taught. On a retest most of these students failed.