Madras High Court Justice R Reghupathy’s claim that a Union Minister tried to pressure him in a case involving alleged forgery of mark sheets in an MBBS exam has given fresh lease of life to a murder case that lies at the heart of the scandal.

The man who blew the lid off the mark sheet forgery racket in Pondicherry University was found murdered on May 20, 2008. That case is hanging fire despite demands from his family and political parties that it be handed over to the CBI which is probing the forgery case.

Jayaraman, 31, an employee in the examination department of Pondicherry University, who was found strangled to death in his farm, had formally filed a complaint to university authorities that middlemen, with the connivance of university officials, were involved in large-scale tampering of answer papers and mark sheets.

The CBI took up the forgery case six months ago and arrested a middleman and a section officer of the university. During the investigation, the agency found documents allegedly implicating Dr Krishnamurthy and his son Kiruba Sridhar, a medical student. It was while hearing their anticipatory bail plea on Monday that Justice Reghupathy claimed that a Union Minister had tried to pressure him.

Sridhar, who was appearing for his third exam — this was his last chance — at Aarupadai Veedu Medical College under the University, had scored only 9 out of 40 in ophthalmology.

The scandal first became public when Jayaraman wrote to university officials in January 2008. He said that he had collected details about how answer papers of several professional students had been replaced and mark sheets tampered with, said Durairaj, his elder brother.

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