A 35-year-old Delhi University graduate, along with his two associates, landed in police net for allegedly cheating thousands of people on the pretext of offering them academic degrees.
They used to charge somewhere Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 a candidate for providing fake degrees, said police, adding that Rs 20 lakh in cash have been recovered from their possession, which they had collected by duping people.
The accused were operating for a decade 24X7 websites, which offered fake Class X, Class XII, graduate and PG certificates, police said.
Police sources told The Pioneer the wife of Pankaj Arora, one of the accused, is currently working as a guest lecturer in a DU college.
Confirming the arrests, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) Vijay Kumar said, “Pankaj Arora (35), a DU graduate, has been arrested along with Pawiter Singh (40) and Gopal Krishnan (40). Pawiter is the mastermind of the racket.”
It was Pankaj, who started a fake education welfare society office in Hari Nagar by the name of SRKM Education and Welfare Society, along with Pawiter Singh. Pankaj was earlier arrested on similar charges in Ashok Vihar. Gopal Krishnan has a printing shop in the locality. The trio, along with their two other members, operated fraudulent websites via mobile phone and an email account, which made it easy for the investigators to track them down, said a senior officer.
The officer said, “The gang had cheated at least thousands of people to the tune of hundreds of crores. Their main headquarter was in ludhiana where they prepared forged marksheets. They sold marksheets or degrees of renowned universities and school boards and educational institutions for B.Ed, llB, BTech, MBBS, ITI, MBA, 10th, 12th, etc.”
The arrested men informed police that they had been running the office at Hari Nagar for past six months.
Talking about the modus operandi, the DCP said, “They gave out advertisements in newspapers promising people to provide all sorts of certificates or degrees easily. In order to convince their clients, they had prepared fraudulent websites of the concerned universities and school boards on which the victims verified the authenticity of these documents. Thousands of persons have secured jobs through these forged certificates.”
Police said they received a complaint on January 3 at the Hari Nagar police station. “One Vijay, a native of Sikar in Rajasthan, said he saw an advertisement in a newspaper and got in touch with the SRKM Education and Welfare Society, where Vijay sought admission in Class X.”
Police said that an FIR has been filed in New Ashok Nagar police station against the two absconding racketeers.
In lieu, Pankaj convinced the man from Sikar to shell out Rs 1 lakh, 31,000 as admission and examination fees. When the man got the marksheet without sitting for an examination, he grew suspicious. To top it, he was given a degree from Andhra State Board. “The fraud came to light when the Sikar based man went to apply for a passport and found that the marksheet was fake,” police said.
For the past three weeks, several teams of the West district had been trying to work on the fake degree racket spread across India.
Based on technical intelligence, we managed to apprehend Pankaj from Punjab in the first week of January, said officials.
At his instance, the other accused Pawiter was arrested from Karkardooma area. A sample forged certificate and the mobile phone being used in maintaining all the fraudulent websites. “He led the team to ludhiana in Punjab where accused Gopal was running the printing press shop. He was arrested and several blank forged certificates, along with computer and material used for preparing the forged marksheets were recovered,” said officials.
The main idea behind conning the people was to give a degree of South college to a north Indian, a north college degree to a south Indian, East college degree to west based person and vice versa.,” said a senior officer.
Following are some of the websites bseap.org.in, pertaining to Board of Secondary Education Andhra Pradesh, alldunivpio.org, pertaining to University of Allahabad, upboard.in, pertaining to UP State Board, dbsse.org and bssedelhi.com pertaining to Delhi Board of Secondary Education.
Several marksheets, degrees, 11 forged blank sheets of Karnataka State Open University, 26 forged blank sheets of Delhi Board of Secondary Education, five forged blank sheets of Delhi Education Board & Intermediate Council of Schooling Education, 19 forged blank sheets of The Council of Basic & Technical Education, two mobile phones used in the forgery racket, one computer used in preparing the soft copy of the forged certificates and sending emails and a printer were recovered.