GG News Bureau
New Delhi, 30th Nov. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday announced that it had attached assets worth over Rs 5 crore from private medical colleges in Telangana. The action is part of an ongoing money laundering probe into allegations of illegal blocking of postgraduate (PG) seats by these institutions. The ED issued a provisional order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), attaching Rs 3.33 crore in bank deposits from Chalmeda Ananda Rao Institute of Medical Sciences and Rs 2.01 crore from MNR Medical College.
The total value of assets attached in this case now stands at Rs 5.34 crore. Earlier, the ED had seized unaccounted cash worth Rs 1.47 crore from Malla Reddy Institute of Medical Sciences and frozen bank deposits totaling Rs 2.89 crore.
The money laundering investigation stems from a state police FIR filed in Warangal district, following a complaint from the Registrar of Kaloji Narayana Rao University of Health Sciences (KNRUHS). The complaint alleged that certain students with high NEET PG ranks were being used to block PG seats under the management quota, a practice known as seat blocking.
The investigation revealed that private medical colleges, in collaboration with consultants and middlemen, were blocking these seats by using the documents of high-ranking students. These blocked seats would be kept vacant until the mop-up round of admissions. After the students were shown as exited from the program, a penalty was imposed by KNRUHS. The ED claims the private colleges arranged for and paid this penalty, either directly or through middlemen.
These seats, after being marked as vacated, were then declared “stray” vacancies, which the colleges were allowed to fill on their own. The private colleges charged inflated fees for these vacancies, with some even collecting “capitation” fees in cash, in addition to the already high charges. The ED has stated that the excess fees and capitation fees collected by the colleges are considered “proceeds of crime” in this case.
The total value of the seized, frozen, and attached assets now amounts to Rs 9.71 crore.
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