Bengaluru Police have busted a fake academic certificates racket, with its nerve centre in New Delhi, which issues fake marks cards and certificates, including MBBS certificates from reputed universities. The gang members also issued fake PhD, engineering, B.Com, BSc and BA marks cards.
Five of the gang members were arrested on Friday, May 5. They have been identified as Kunal Kumar Mondal, Deepankar Sen, Sandesh Agarwal, Saurav Kumar Sharma and Aruna.
Modus Operandi
According to police, Delhi was the source of the racket. With more than 180 agents spread across the country, the gang members used to charge between Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh based on the demand of the certificate.
"You just tell the fraudsters what degree certificate you want, and from which university, and they will give it to you within a couple of days after you deposit money in their bank account," said an investigating officer.
The bust and recoveries
After three agents were arrested and interrogated, it was found that they were making easy money and lived in posh apartments. Police have also seized a BMW and Audi.
Based on their confessions, a team was sent to New Delhi where they confiscated over 5,000 mark-sheets, including 1,600 that were already printed and ready to be dispatched to their clients.
The officer said, "We seized computers, CPU (central processing unit) and hard disk that were used to make fake marks cards. By interrogating the arrested persons, we learnt that they have sold up to 1.5 lakh marks cards in last few years."
Police also seized forged mark-sheet templates of various universities like Madurai Kamraj University, Karnataka Open University, University of Allahabad, and Global Open University.
The larger concern
As many of the fake certificates involved those of MBBS, it has raised the fear of fake doctors being out in the market.
"We have got the list of 1,600 people whose marks cards were ready for distribution; and now we have a big job of tracing all these people and stopping them from getting jobs or other benefits from using these marks cards," the officer said.
"We also have to identify the people who have already taken the certificates and are enjoying the luxury by getting into jobs in private firms. Most shocking is that they have issued even MBBS certificates. God knows how many people those fake doctors are treating today!" he added.
The fraudsters charged Rs 60,000 for a B.Com certificate, Rs 45,000 for BA, Rs 50,000 for BSc and Rs 60,000 for engineering marks cards.
