Lucknow:
Uttar Pradesh's former Principal Health Secretary Pradeep Shukla has been detained today by the CBI at the Lucknow airport. Mr Shukla has been held for his alleged role in the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam of Uttar Pradesh. The senior IAS officer was the mission director of the NRHM scheme during which period the allegations of corruption were made.
Just three days ago the CBI arrested the former Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr AK Shukla in Lucknow in connection with the murder case of CMO Dr Vinod Arya. Since the scam was exposed, two senior doctors affiliated to the health department including Dr Arya, had been found murdered; another was found dead in a Lucknow jail in mysterious circumstances. Then, in January, an officer with the UP Jal Nigam committed suicide allegedly because he was being investigated for his role in the scam.
The Allahabad High Court had ordered the CBI to investigate the trio of deaths and the swindle entrenched in the department.
The scam involves the Uttar Pradesh health department which had access to Rs 3,500 crores a year to provide better medical services for villages under the NRHM scheme. It was meant to be implemented by 72 CMOs and nodal officers from other state government departments. It is alleged that much of the money for the scheme was squandered by bureaucrats and other officers who handed inflated contracts to suppliers of medicines and equipment.
Babu Singh Kushwaha, the minister handling the health department during the period the NRHM scam came to light and the CMOs were murdered, was forced to resign in April 2011.