The Rs 5700 crore National Rural Health Mission scam took an interesting turn with the arrest of senior Indian Administrative Service officer Pradeep Shukla in Lucknow early Thursday morning.
Shukla, who held the office of UP NRHM director in addition to being the state's principal secretary (health), was intercepted by CBI sleuths at the Lucknow airport, just as he was about to fly to Delhi. He has been taken for "interrogation" to the local CBI office in Lucknow.
His arrest seemed to have become imminent once the CBI had arrested former Lucknow chief medical officer Dr A K Shukla on Monday. The arrested CMO was understood to have divulged major leads, clearly suggesting the neck-deep involvement of the senior IAS officer in the day-to-day working of the NRHM programme in the state.
"We have taken him into custody and formal arrest will follow over the next few hours," disclosed a senior CBI official, who claimed, "Shukla was responsible for clearing payments to number of fictitious firms that were created to supply various goods required under the NRHM programme."
According to him, "not only were the goods heavily over-priced but a lot of the supplies were also made only on paper while the booty was shared between top people in the government including ministers and bureaucrats, and the so-called suppliers."
While CBI had already arrested a couple of such fictitious suppliers together with a few district chief medical officers and former family welfare minister Babu Singh Kushwaha, who was widely known for his proximity to then chief minister Mayawati, Pradeep Shukla managed to evade arrest because of his strong political links.
Well known as a brilliant bureaucrat, Shukla always received much prominence in every political regime where he was given key appointments. He was also topper of the 1981 IAS batch. His wife Aradhana Shukla is also an IAS officer in Lucknow.
Shukla's father-in-law Dharni Dhar was an illustrious officer of the Indian Revenue Service and had retired as chief commissioner of income tax and uncle-in-law was no less a political figure than one-time top notch Congress leader Vidya Charan Shukla.
Even as he has been pleading that he had no role to play in the multi-billion scam under which Rs 5700 crore were alleged to have been simply gulped down by 'sarkari' sharks, CBI claims to have sufficient evidence to nail him down.
Interestingly, barely a month
CBI files first chargesheet in NRHM scam
One more chargesheet filed against Jagan
UP health scam: Former Lucknow CMO arrested
BJP all set to rejuvenate the party in UP
Alex Menon case: Chhattisgarh govt may release Naxals