Twenty-two doctors were indicted and suspended for their involvement in the Rs.9000 crore National Rural Health Mission scam that also involves the murder of three district chief medical officers over the past three years.

The suspended doctors include former Lucknow Chief Medical Officer Dr A K Shukla, others were medical superintendents of different local hospitals, one additional chief medical officer and three junior medical officers, all of whom are accused of large scale pilferage of funds from the NRHM programme in which the union government had allocated monies towards rural health projects.

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The Defence Ministry has suspended VRS Natarajan, the chief of Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) a government owned company that makes vehicles for the army. He now faces corruption charges and is being questioned by federal investigators.

BEML makes the all-terrain Tatra trucks used extensively by the armed forces. Retired army chief General VK Singh had in March alleged that he was offered a bribe of some $2.52 million by a lobbyist to clear the purchase of Tatra trucks for the army, and said the vehicles are sub-standard.

Natarajan has denied all claims of corruption, denied that the Tatra trucks were obsolete, and threatened to sue Gen.Singh unless he apologised.

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The Akilesh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh tabled a report from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on anomalies in the sale of 21 government sugar mills and large scale financial irregularities in the implementation of the National Rural Health Mission during the previous Mayawati rule. CAG reports on commercial and revenue receipts were also tabled, which also reveal mismanagement in financial dealings in various departments.

The reports showed various enormous loses to the exchequer that totaled several thousands of crores, that included rigged bids on several projects and collusion with contractors and violations of fund channels.

CAG has recommended a thorough investigation by the Enforcemenet Directorate.

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Rafiq's father was treated at a hospital in Tonk for a urinary tract infection for a little over a month in 1994. Rafiq offered Rs.75 and two kgs of laddoos to health officials Mukut Bihari and Kalyan Lal, to issue the discharge certificate. The officials declined his offer and asked for Rs100 instead.

Rafiq informed the anti-corruption department who laid a trap and arrested the two officials when they accepted the bribe.

Now the two Rajasthan health service officials will serve six months in prison as the Supreme Court upheld their conviction under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

During the trial they had served six months in prison and will now be taken back to prison to serve the remaining sentence.

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Team Anna clubbed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and thirteen other Cabinet ministers accusing them of corruption. Team Anna has threatened to launch an indefinite fast from July 25, and picked portions of a draft CAG report to make charges against Singh when the coal ministry was with him.

The other ministers against whom Team Anna has demanded a probe by an independent investigation team include P Chidambaram, Sharad Pawar, S M Krishna, Kamal Nath, Praful Patel, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Virbhadra Singh, Kapil Sibal, Salman Khurshid, G K Vasan, Farooq Abdullah, M Alagiri and Sushil Kumar Shinde.

Congress dismissed the accusations as unsubstantiated averments that did not need to be responded to.

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