JOIN USRs 125-crore marks card racket busted in Bengaluru
The Central Crime Branch (CCB) says it has caught a five-member group that ran a massive racket selling 1.6 lakh fake marks card for a whopping Rs 125 crore in the last three years. Five people have been arrested in Bengaluru and Delhi.
The racket was masterminded by Sandesh Agarwal, who runs a firm called Double Eight Consultancy in Vardhaman Mall, Delhi. The four other suspects were agents hired by him: Kunal Kumar Mondal, Deepankar Sen and Aruna, all from Bengaluru, and Saurav Kumar Sharma from Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh.
Sharma works at RPS International School, Narangpur, Ghaziabad, while Aruna runs Fortune Institute in Bengaluru. Mondal, a native of Bihar, operates Join Us for Education at Manipal Centre, off MG Road, Bengaluru.
The suspected racketeers had opened centres for educational training and counselling, and advertised on social media. They targeted students who either failed exams or scored low marks by promising them admission to reputable institutions, DCP (Crime) H D Ananda Kumar told journalists.
The group created fake marks cards based on a student’s capacity to pay. The marks cards of reputable institutions were sold at a premium. The score in the marks card was also dependent on the “fees” paid. The marks cards of professional courses were sold for Rs 1 lakh while those of traditional programmes cost Rs 50,000, he said.
The group had hired as many as 180 sub-agents across India. “Sometimes agents approached students while at times, candidates themselves sought help,” the DCP said.
Police suspect that many people landed private sector jobs by using the fake marks cards, though they are unsure whether such candidates had got into government employment, too. “Government agencies contact educational institutions to verify the authenticity of marks cards. The chances of the beneficiaries getting into government jobs are low,” the officer said.
Preliminary investigation suggests that the racketeers earned as much as Rs 125 crore by selling a whopping 1.6 lakh fake marks cards in the last three years. Police have recovered 732 ready-for-sale and 836 ready-for-print marks cards, rubber stamps, facsimiles and holograms.
The fake marks cards were generated in the name of 39 institutions of higher learning across the country, including the Karnataka State Open University and the Karnataka State Council for Intermediate and Higher Education.
How was the racket busted?
Sathwik, a student, had approached Kunal Kumar Mondal, one of the suspects, seeking a fake marks card. But their conversation was overheard by a police informant. The CCB then raided Join Us for Education run by Mondal and arrested him. Based on documents seized from Mondal’s office and his statement, the CCB arrested Deepankar Sen, who works at a private college in Bengaluru. The two men led the police to Saurav Kumar Sharma. A special team of the CCB then raided Agarwal’s office in Delhi and apprehended him.
Police are verifying Agarwal’s claim that he had studied Bcom and LLB. They are also checking 50,000-odd e-mails sent and received by Agarwal.