Dr Rajendra Arya's wife, Usha
Almost a year after he was released from jail, Dr Rajendra Arya died last week in a hospital in his hometown of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. "He was not unwell. Till the end, he had a healthy appetite," his wife, Usha, told NDTV today. The police has doctors' reports that point to alcoholism. But like so many families who have lost a relative linked to the Vyapam scam, Dr Arya's wife feels essential facts are missing.
Last week, he became part of a forbidding statistic: among the more than 30 people linked to the scam who have died in recent years. He was imprisoned in 2013 for six months. After he was released, his wife says, "The police used to ask us for bribes. They said if we didn't pay, they would imprison him again."
The opposition says that Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan must accept responsibility not just for the Vyapam swindle, but the many deaths that now criss-cross the investigation.
The scam is named for a state-run board whose acronym in Hindi is Vyapam. The board conducts tests for admission to state-run colleges, and qualifying exams for jobs in government departments. In 2013, reports emerged that students and job-seekers were paying bribes to have imposters or proxies take the exams. The Madhya Pradesh High Court is monitoring the state police's inquiry, rejecting calls from the opposition to entrust the investigation to the CBI.
Dr Arya's wife says middlemen like him found themselves in prison, while politicians have remain untouched.
In another part of Gwalior, senior police officer Birendra Jain counters that claim and denies that Dr Arya's death is seeped in mystery. He produces documents from the local hospital that say the doctor was an alcoholic.
"It's only a coincidence. We have no reason to believe that there is anything more... many of the deaths took place before the investigations began," he says of the long list of Vyapam casualties.