Days after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed an FIR against Justice IM Quddusi and four others, the former judge of the Allahabad, Orissa and Chhattisgarh High Courts has been arrested.

Quddusi is said to be involved in a racket involving the opening of medical colleges in Uttar Pradesh.

The custodians of Prasad Education Trust, which owned of one of the 46 medical colleges barred by the central government, had allegedly approached Quddusi and three others with a view to settling a matter involving permission to set up medical colleges pending in the Supreme Court.

The members of the Trust filed a petition in the Supreme Court, requesting Justice Quddusi and one Bhawana Pandey to get the matter “settled” through his contacts. These two in turn engaged one Biswanath Agrawala to do their bidding. Agrawala is said to have very close contact with “senior relevant public functionaries”, and demanded “huge gratification” for bribing public officials for the same.

Yesterday, CBI sleuths had entered the premises of sitting Orissa High Court judge Justice CR Dash, under the mistaken impression that it was the residence of Justice Quddusi. Later, the officers would conduct raids on Quddusi’s residences in Bhubaneswar, Lucknow and Delhi’s Greater Kailash on Wednesday.

An offence under Section 8 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 120-b of the Indian Penal Code has been made out against Quddusi and the others.

Justice Quddusi was elevated as an additional judge of the Allahabad High Court in 1993, and was made a permanent judge in 1995. He was then transferred to the Orissa High Court in 2004, where he would serve for six years before his transfer to the Chhattisgarh High Court. He retired in 2012.