The Supreme Court on Friday stayed a Madhya Pradesh High Court order directing the registration of an FIR and constitution of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe allegations against Congress MLA Arif Masood, who is accused of running a Bhopal-based college on forged documents.
A bench of Justices J.K. Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi issued notice to the Madhya Pradesh government on a petition filed by Indira Priyadarshini College, which had challenged the high court’s August 18 directive.
The Madhya Pradesh High Court had ordered the Bhopal Police Commissioner to register an FIR against Masood within three days and asked the Director General of Police to set up a special probe team. Acting on the order, state police constituted a three-member SIT on August 21, headed by Additional Director General of Police (Telecom) Sanjeev Shami, with DIG (Chhindwara Range) Kalyan Chakravarty and AIG (Training) Nimisha Pandey as members.
Following the directive, an FIR was registered at Koh-e-Fiza Police Station under Sections 420 (cheating) and 471 (using forged documents) of the Indian Penal Code, ACP Anil Bajpai confirmed.
The controversy began when the Madhya Pradesh government cancelled the recognition of Indira Priyadarshini College, run by Aman Education Society — of which Masood serves as secretary — on June 9. Masood then moved the High Court challenging the decision. Instead of granting relief, the High Court ordered initiation of criminal proceedings, leading to the SIT probe and FIR.
Hearing the appeal filed by the college, the Supreme Court stayed the High Court’s order, granting interim relief to both Masood and the institution. The apex court clarified that the matter would be examined further after the Madhya Pradesh government files its response.
The case will come up for detailed hearing in due course.
