Lucknow: Continuing its probe into the Rs 500 crore scholarship scam, the Enforcement Directorate arrested the chairman of Jivika Institute of Pharmacy and manager of Dr BR Ambedkar Educational Society, Ram Gopal, from Hardoi late on Friday night.
The judge of CBI special court (anti-corruption) Ajay Vikram Singh sent Ram Gopal to ED custody from October 7-13. This is the fifth arrest in the case.
On April 26, ED had arrested key accused Izhar Hussain Jafri, Ali Abbas Jafri and Ravi Prakash Gupta, who ran the Hygia Group of Institutions. Later, on August 24, another accused Vikram Nag was also arrested.
Sources in the ED said that Ram Gopal was issued seven summons for appearing before the agency after his name surfaced in the scam, but he kept on giving lame excuses. A team carried out a search at his residence in Hardoi and arrested him.
It surfaced during investigation that Ram Gopal had also served as a counsellor to students of Hygia group. He was in touch with Izhar Jafri and received money from him in his bank accounts.
ED officials said that the accused diverted the scholarship money which was fraudulently amassed by the four accused arrested earlier. He also used to arrange Aadhaar cards of students along with their bank account details to fraudulently avail scholarship money.
Sources privy to the investigation said that during the custody period, the accused would be confronted with documents seized by the central agency in which his role has surfaced. He would also be questioned about the details of bank accounts in which he received several crores of rupees.
ED is screening the records of 161 colleges spread across the state in connection with the siphoning of funds in the name of scholarships to students under various schemes of the central and state governments.
