State police arrest CMJ
SHILLONG: CM Jha University vice chancellor Chandra Mohan Jha was arrested on Tuesday in the Madhubani district of Bihar by Meghalaya Police with assistance from Bihar Police. The investigators were surprised to find that Jha was contesting the Lok Sabha election as an independent candidate from Jhanjharpur constituency in Bihar.
Jha was wanted by Meghalaya police for his much controversial CM Jha University which was accused of awarding fake PhD degrees to 434 candidates in the 2012-13 academic year, and enrolling 490 students for the PhD programme for 2012-2013, even as only 10 of its faculty members in the university had doctorates.
A senior police official informed that Inspector Y Chettri and a constable had left for Bihar on April 18 to initiate this arrest. “The police arrested Jha while he was on his way to attend the election rally,” he said.
According to the police official, Jha would have to be produced before the CJM court, Shillong, within three days’ time since he was on a transit remand. He said the police team was likely to leave Bihar to bring Jha to Shillong on Wednesday.
“We had got the non-bailable warrant from the CJM court on April 10,” the police official said while adding that the court had given the police till May 14 to report if they had executed the order to arrest Jha.
The Supreme Court in March this year had cancelled its earlier interim order on anticipatory bail granted to Jha who was under the scanner of the State CID. On July 19 last year the Supreme Court granted an interim protection for Jha after he had made a prayer for anticipatory bail in the apex court following rejection of his bail application by the High Court of Meghalaya.
In August last, the State Government had challenged the anticipatory bail granted to Jha by the Supreme Court.
It is learnt that Jha is currently in custody of Bihar Police and Meghalaya police will seek from the court there (Bihar) his transit remand to Meghalaya for further investigation into criminal charges filed against him.
It may be mentioned that former Meghalaya Governor RS Mooshahary who was also the Visitor of CMJU, had sought for the dissolution of the university in the interest of maintaining of proper standards of higher education in the State after he had detected several irregularities in the functioning of the university.