May 19, 2025 11:22 PM IST
Sudhir Sharma, a mining baron who had started out as a teacher, was accused of acting as a middleman to rig the recruitment exams conducted by Vyapam
BHOPAL/JABALPUR: The Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court has quashed all four FIRs registered against mining baron Sudhir Sharma in connection with the large-scale irregularities in admission to medical colleges and government recruitments more than a decade ago.
A division bench of Chief Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and justice Vivek Jain passed the order to cancel the four FIRs filed by CBI in the Vyapam case on Friday. The detailed order is awaited.
Sharma, a mining baron who had started out as a teacher, was close to former technical education minister late Laxmikant Sharma, and was also accused by a special task force and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of acting as a middleman to rig the recruitment exams conducted by Vyapam, now known as MP Employee Selection Board.
Sudhir Sharma was arrested in 2014 and spent two years in jail before getting out on bail in the four cases in June 2016.
CBI had submitted charge sheets against him accusing him of irregularities in sub-inspector recruitment exam 2012, police constable recruitment exam 2012, contract school teacher recruitment-2 exam 2011 and Forest Guard Recruitment Exam 2013.
Sharma, who appealed to the high court to quash the cases, said the CBI case did not allege any financial transaction between Sharma and any other person in the four cases. “It is not mentioned anywhere in the charge sheet and the excel sheet of CBI that the petitioner earned any kind of financial benefit. The cases registered have been registered on the basis of a memorandum of some witnesses. As there is no evidence of earning financial benefit, the registered FIR is eligible to be cancelled,” lawyer Kapil Sharma, who appeared for him. said.
“He was made an accused only on the basis of Section 27 memorandum and CDR, while there is no direct evidence against him,” the lawyer said, adding that no corroborative evidence was presented by the prosecution against the petitioner to support the charge.
He stressed that the prosecution could not make out a case against his client only on the basis of call detail records that revealed he was in regular contact with co-accused Vyapam officials who were his old acquaintances.
