An estranged husband’s organ failure apparently triggered by alcoholism; a son’s drunk-driving road accident; another son on his bike failing to spot a road divider; and a father rushed to hospital with fever, aches and vomiting.
All four are dead now and all four — part of the Madhya Pradesh government’s list of 25 deaths “related” to the Vyapam admission tests scam — are caught in the Congress vs BJP political firestorm.
The Indian Express travelled across Madhya Pradesh to meet the families of the dead. It found that a grandmother had burnt all photos of her grandson; a grandfather dismissed suggestions of foul play as “mere rumours”; a bewildered father said, “We had no enemies”; and a son just wanted to be left alone.
‘I believe they were drunk, speeding’
vyapam scam, vyapam deaths, vyapam ghotala, shivraj singh chouhan, vyapam scam deaths, vyapam scam mp, mp vyapam scam, mp vyapam, mp news, vyapam scam news, vyapam news, madhya pradesh news, india news, indian expressAnshul Sachan, 24
Cause of death: Road accident
Anshul Sachan, who joined Sagar Medical College in Gwalior as an MBBS student in 2009, was accused by police of having been a “middleman” in the Pre-Medical Test (PMT) linked to the Vyapam scam.
On June 14, 2010, Sachan was returning to Sagar from Bhopal with two other students when their car crashed into a truck near Raisen. “The accident was so bad that the bodies had to be taken out after cutting through the metal,” said Sachan’s father Rajkumar, 53, a farmer.
Sachan lived in his grandfather’s house in Hoshangabad’s Kothibazar till he completed his Class XII. He then went to Kanpur for coaching classes and was first selected for a veterinary course before he joined the Sagar college, his father said.
Rajkumar said he used to divide his time between Hoshangabad and Kuvakheda, a village about 40 km from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, where he stayed with with his wife and daughter.
He claimed that he never knew that his son had been named as an accused in the Vyapam case, adding that he used to give him Rs 3,000 every month to cover his expenses.
Rajkumar added that although he was a bit uneasy about the timing of his son’s death, he had no complaints.