Namrata Damor, a 19-year-old student studying medical science at Mahatma Gandhi Medical College in Indore, had gone missing in early January 2012. Tragically, on the night of January 7th, 2012, her lifeless body was discovered next to railway tracks in Ujjain. The initial postmortem report indicated that she had succumbed to asphyxia, specifically violent asphyxia resulting from smothering, leading to the classification of her death as a homicide.

The initial report also noted bruising on her lips and the absence of some teeth. However, the police later dismissed the initial findings and classified her death as a suicide after the second post mortem.

More than three years later, a journalist from a leading news organisation, Akshay Singh goes to interview her father following the investigation on her death. Before recording the interview, he starts coughing and frothing.

Mr. Singh had reached Mehtab Singh Damor’s house in Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh, following the mysterious death of his daughter, Namrata Damor, in 2012. The father agreed to talk. Both sat down and Damor, handed over the photocopies of petitions, police and court reports to Singh who sat opposite to him. The tea was served. As Singh sipped his tea, his face froze and fell on the ground with frothing on his lips.

“We lay him down on the floor, loosened his clothes and sprinkled his face with water,” recalled Rahul Kariaya, an Indore-based journalist who took Singh to Damor’s house, “I checked his pulse and I knew right away, Akshay Singh was dead.”

He was rushed to the civil hospital and later to a private hospital, but doctors failed to revive him. The postmortem report declared it a case of heart attack and found the size of his heart enlarged during the time of his death.

A day later, the dean of a government medical college from the state who was reported to be putting together a list of students involved in Vyapam was found dead at a New Delhi hotel.

Sharma was the dean of Jabalpur Medical College and had allegedly submitted 200 documents to Special Task Force (STF) of Madhya Pradesh. He had put together the list of names of students who were allegedly involved in the test-rigging scandal. A day after Akshay’s death, he was found dead in his bed at Hotel Uppal, near Delhi’s international airport. He was on his way to Tripura’s capital, Agartala for an inspection on behalf of Indian Medical Association.

Police found a nearly empty bottle of alcohol in the room. Sharma appeared to have drunk heavily, vomited during the night, and died of “natural causes”, officers close to the investigation said.

Incidentally, Sharma was the second Dean of the medical college to die under mysterious circumstances. A year ago, another dean from Jabalpur medical college immolated himself in a garden behind his house.

Dr DK, the then-dean of Jabalpur Medical College, was in charge of college's in-house investigations into the Vyapam scam. At around 8:45 am, he was seen rushing out of his house in flames when his wife had gone for a morning walk.

Police later claimed that it was a case of suicide and nothing suspicious were found. However, whistleblowers involved in the scam claimed it wasn’t simply a case of suicide and demanded a central probe to his unusual death.

Narendra Rajput, a degree holder of Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) from a Jhansi college, had returned to his village and opened a clinic in Harpalpur, just six months before his untimely demise.

On April 13, 2014, Narendra complained of chest pain while working in the fields and rushed back home, but collapsed at the doorstep. Although a postmortem failed to determine a clear cause of death, the family lodged a complaint to facilitate an insurance claim under the government's farmer insurance scheme. However, their claim remains unresolved due to the inconclusive postmortem report.

Additionally, it was revealed that Narendra was implicated as a "middleman" in Vyapam scam, a fact that only came to light when the police visited the family's home months after his passing, according to his relatives.