Vinay Kumar Pathak

On October 29, 2022, UP Police's Special Task Force started probing charges of bribery, corruption, illegal confinement, and extorting money against him and his alleged associates on the complaint of David Mario Denis whose firm was engaged in exam related work at Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Agra. The FIR was registered in the Indira Nagar police station of Lucknow under section 342, 386, 504, and 506 of the IPC & section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Denis claimed to have paid Pathak commission to the tunes of ₹1.4 crore via his associates for clearing of various bills.

The matter came to light when UP STF was probing irregularities in the BAMS exam copy case conducted by Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University in Agra where Pathak held additional charge of VC between January 2022 and September 2022. Eventually, UP STF arrested Ajay Mishra and Ajay Jain, who were the alleged associates and co-accused in the matter.

Pathak then approached the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court praying the court to quash the FIR registered against him and to issue direction to the state in the nature of mandamus not to prosecute him on the basis of the FIR. The plea was contested by the Government of Uttar Pradesh stating that the FIR disclosed serious offences committed by Pathak and that he cannot be granted relief from arrest. Thereafter, the two-judge bench of Justice Rajesh Singh Chauhan and Justice VK Singh rejected the writ petition filed by Pathak, granting him no relief on the matter, on November 15, 2022, stated in paragraph 38 of the order that,

On Tuesday, November 15, 2022, after the High Court rejected Pathak's petition to quash the FIR lodged against him, the UP STF's reluctance to initiate action against Pathak diminished and they issued Pathak a summon to appear in Lucknow on November 18, 2022, at STF's headquarters for questioning and clarification in his case. Pathak was not at his official residence in Kanpur when two sub-inspector rank officials of UP STF reached there with the documents and his VC staff told the officials they had no idea of his whereabouts. STF also setup an electronic surveillance team to trace Pathak’s location.

Shortly after this, the STF team received an email from Pathak stating that he is 'seriously ill' and urged the STF to not summon him before November 25. STF shot a reply to his email seeking the nature of his illness, the details of the doctor he is consulting, and the contact number on which he can be reached. Pathak did not reply to STF's email after which the agency shot another follow up email which also went unanswered. He also failed to show up on the summon issued to him for November 18, 2022. STF then started digging Pathak's passport details and travel history while preparing to issue a lookout notice against him.

Vinay Kumar Pathak is an Indian professor (Computer Science) who has served as lecturer, assistant professor at HBTI Kanpur, project scientist at IIT Kanpur and again as professor and dean at HBTI Kanpur before taking over as vice-chancellor UOU on 25 November 2009. After that he has served many universities of Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and UP as Vice Chancellor. He has successfully organized many national and international conferences.

Pathak was instrumental in the implementation of Vedic mathematics in 1992. He worked in Media Lab Asia and successfully did the work of info-sculpture.

Pathak did his Bachelor of Technology in computer science from Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, Kanpur, in 1991; M.Tech. from IIT Kharagpur in 1998; and Ph.D. in computer science from U.P. Technical University, Lucknow under the joint guidance of IIT Kanpur, November 2004. Research interests of Pathak include computational geometry and image processing, artificial intelligence, machine learning.