High court asks cops to file affidavit on plaint against vice-chancellor

The Times of India: Nagpur: Thursday, July 26, 2012.

Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on Wednesday directed the assistant government pleader to file an affidavit regarding steps taken on a police complaint filed against Nagpur University vice-chancellor Vilas Sapkal. The directives came after the government informed the court that police had approached the joint director of higher education in Nagpur for providing details on Sapkal and latter had yet to inform them.

The government pleader sought two weeks to file compliance report as directed by the court during last hearing on July 18. But the division bench of justices Pratap Hardas and MT Joshi told him to file an affidavit on record detailing the steps taken. Citing RTI document, petitioner Sunil Mishra claimed that Sapkal had misled the chancellor's office in Mumbai while applying for VC's job by submitting wrong information about his employment.

He had lodged a complaint at Malabar Hills police station in Mumbai as the chancellor K Sankaranarayanan's office was under its jurisdiction. Mishra had also accused education secretary and officials from the chancellor's office of not verifying Sapkal's qualifications before appointing him at such a high post.

Appearing in person, Mishra pointed out that Sapkal had mentioned in his biodata that he had worked with a Mumbai-based company for a couple of years in 1987-88 but documents related to it were not available. Moreover, he claimed to have had a short stint with a Germany-based Sartorious AG as a technical director but even documents related to it were not made available to the complainant.