A city police team on Thursday busted a racket specialising in ‘production’ of degree certificates and marksheets of various professional courses and that too at subsidised rates.
Customers in need of degrees would approach Gowthaman, a 57-year-old office assistant working with the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education. Gowthaman is no ordinary office assistant. He joined the service in 1990 and was transferred to the TNSCHE in 1997. Over the years he mastered the art of producing degree certificates, mark lists and course completion certificates which are usually issued by the council.
With his son logesh (32), who claims to be a diploma holder in computer programming, joining him, Gowthaman became more reliable than State-run-universities. The father-son duo produced “excellent” SSlC, degree and engineering degree certificates which rivalled the ones issued by the Government of Tamil Nadu. The cost was reasonable, going by the present day standard of living. They charged only Rs15,000 for a SSlC /degree certificate while the engineering degrees, in any branch, were sold for Rs30,000.
Business was quite good and they roped in two brokers to lure customers. Gowthaman had been arrested by the police in 2000 in connection with a case of forgery. But he wriggled out of it and re-joined duty in 2002. After a brief lull, he revived the business with modern gadgets.
But the agents Satyamoorthy and Gnanavel let him down. The police was tipped off by one of the estranged customers who wanted a certificate at reduced rates. The police seized fake documents from the agents who led them to the “hi-tech studios’ of Gowthaman. High quality SSlC books and engineering degree certificates, rubber stamps and more than 20,000 holograms of various colleges, educational institutions, seven computers, scanners, printers, high-quality papers and of course fake certificates were seized from them.
Prof SP Thyagarajan,former Vice-Chancellor, University of Madras, told The Pioneer that it was time universities in Tamil Nadu joined the global online degree examination system with which employers and universities all over the world would be able to scrutinise the validity of the certificates furnished by the candidates.
“It is a small software with which any institutions can check the authenticity of the degree certificates. This fake degrees are the reasons for the poor employability of youngsters from Tamol Nadu,” said Prof Thyagarajan.
Gowthaman has his own reasons for launching his own council for higher education: “Sir, I have two wives and five children to look after. The salary from the Government is too low and insufficient to maintain such a family. I too have dreams, sir.” Gowthaman told the police during interrogation.