The Bengaluru police have stumbled upon a major scam of fake mark cards and degree certificates spread across the country.
The Fraud and Misappropriation Wing of the Central Crime Branch, has arrested five persons in connection with the case including Kunal Kumar Mondal, Sandesh Agarwal, Dipankar Sen, Sourav Kumar Sharma alias Gourav Kumar and Aruna.
According to DCP Crime, HD Ananda Kumar, the investigating officer, the accused have been running the racket for two years and have sold around 1.6 lakh fake marks cards and degree certificates for various professional courses.
The fake certificates were priced between Rs 25,000 and Rs 30,000 each. What is more shocking is that, when the police cross referenced some of the fake marks cards with the respective colleges, the names of the students who had obtained these fake marks cards was there on their database.
“This gives rise to suspicion that the colleges were also in on the scam. We are still investigating to find out,” a senior police official said.
“On April 19, we arrested a man named Kunal Kumar Mondal from his apartment located near Manyata Tech Park after we received a tip off that he was selling fake marks cards. Mondal is originally from Bihar and had moved to Bengaluru in 2011,” DCP Kumar said.
Upon questioning Mondal, he informed the police that his point of contact was Dipankar Sen, who worked in a private college in Bengaluru. The CCB sleuths went on to arrest him.
“Dipankar Sen spilled the beans on Sourav Kumar Sharma, who was located in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad. We arrested him on May 2. Sharma revealed that Sandesh Aggarwal was the one running the show. He was running an agency named Double Eight Consultants in New Delhi. We picked up Aggarwal on May 2 itself,” DCP Kumar said.
Sandesh Aggarwal used to recruit agents, who were given the designation of Education Consultants for his career counselling agency. These agents would in turn get people to buy the fake certificates.
The CCB sleuths say that Sandesh Aggarwal had 180 agents recruited by 88 consultancy firms spread across the country and the operation has been on for two years now. Upon raiding the Double Eight Consultancy Office in New Delhi, the police have recovered 732 printed marks cards.
“As of now we know that they printed fake marks cards, transfer certificates, provisional certificates and degree certificates for 38 top colleges including Allahabad University, Karnataka State University, The Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University, Karnataka Open University, Dr BR Ambedkar University, Dr CV Raman University, Sikkim University, Jodhpur National University among others,” DCP Ananda Kumar added.
These fake marks cards include those for engineering, arts, science and medical courses.
“They have issued even doctorate certificates of various universities across the country. There may be over one lakh people who are currently employed by various organisations based on these fake marks cards including doctors, engineers and as other professionals,” ACP East Hemant Nimbalkar said.
The accused have been booked under sections 420 (cheating), 476 (counterfeiting) and 471 (forgery).