In the infamous scholarship scam in which crores of Government money was embezzled by private entities, under the pretext of awarding scholarships to students coming from scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) background, a case has been registered in Banbasa police station against the owner of Devbhoomi Vidyapeeth Banbasa and his accomplices. The then Assistant Social Welfare Officer (ASWO) has also been booked under the same sections.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) in-charge Champawat has filed a case against DVB owner Cherab Jain along with Anil Goyal, Vivek Sharma and Gaurav Jain who are among the several other officers and administrative staff of the college.
The then ASWO Gopal Singh Rana and mediators Mukesh Kumar, Pradeep Kumar and others who were involved in the operation of the college were booked under the section of 409, 420, 466, 467, 468, 471 and 120 b.
According to the information provided by the Police Headquarters (PHQ), during the investigation it was found that in the year 2015-16 DVB has awarded Rs 39,52,000 to 221 students of SC category and 140 students of ST category. The institution was operational in a rented building in the year 2015; the same is not operational presently.
The landlord of the building Sukhdev Kumar Puri resident of Banbasa said that for the operation of classes the building was rented by Cherab Jain, Anil Goyal and Vivek Sharma. The Social Welfare Department (SWD) provided information about the students which were showed to have been awarded with scholarship to the SIT team among which 25 students were physically verified by the team.
During the investigation, the students said that the mediators Pradeep Kumar and Mukesh Kumar, both native of Udham Singh Nagar told them that if they take admission in DVB then they will be awarded with free degree and scholarship. They then took their academic, age, caste verification documents and said that they have been admitted in the college.
The mediators also told the students that they will only have to go for one or two classes.
The students told the SIT team that were called once at Banbasa to open their accounts in Bank of Baroda, but they were neither awarded with any scholarship nor were they given any diploma degree.
During the investigation it was found that the scholarship money from their account has been withdrawn through ATM cards, but the student’s said that they had no idea about ATM cards being issued by the bank nor they have taken any scholarship money. The SIT team suspects that other students will also tell the same thing. Upon investigating the Banbasa branch of Bank of Baroda it was found that an account was opened in the bank January 26, 2015 which is still operational, but it hasn’t been active since a long time. The account holders are Cherab Jain, Anil Goyal and Vivek Sharma.
Prima facie the evidence appears to indicate that DVB was only admitted students to gain scholarship money and the then ASWO in his investigative report awarded scholarship money to the institution even after knowing that classes are not operational there.
The documents provided by Social Welfare Department (SWD) said that DVB is recognized by Himgiri Zee University Dehradun, Sanskrit University Haridwar and North East Frontier University Andhra Pradesh.