Numerous candidates seeking government jobs and those who recently bagged these are under the scanner with a fake degree racket busted by the district police. More than 1,700 persons are believed to have benefited from fake certificates, showing affiliation with Panjab University, Chandigarh, Punjabi University, Patiala, and the Punjab School Education Board, in the past over four years.
The police claims to have arrested Balvir Singh and Gurpreet Singh, alias Ginny, both residents of Mohali. Another suspect Jaswinder Singh is yet to be arrested. His arrest is crucial as he is believed to have “ arranged for potential candidates.”
Patiala SSP Gurpreet Singh Gill said that Balvir and Gurpreet had revealed during preliminary questioning that marks sheets of Panjab University, Punjabi University and the school board were sold for as low as Rs 7,000.
“In some cases, marks were shown awarded to candidates who had either failed or had not appeared for the examination at all ”, Gill said.
On the modus operandi, the SSP said while one of the gang members looked for customers, the other two made certificates on a scanner using paper similar to that used by the two universities. “We are probing the matter and the role of university insiders cannot be ruled out. The certificates looked impeccable at first glance”, he said.
Police officials investigating the case said the recent recruitments, including those in the police wing, in the past three years were under the scanner. “We will try to recover all the certificates from the accused, verify these from the universities and then zero in on the candidates who benefited from them ”, said SI Bhinder Singh.
The police have got in touch with officials of the two universities as well as the school board for details pertaining to the degrees recovered from the computer records.
“Our teams will tally the records recovered with the original ones and summon all those suspected to be involved in the scam”, said CIA incharge Sukhminder Chauhan.
A case has been registered under Sections 420, 467, 468, 471 and 120-B of the IPC at the Tripuri police station.
No comments:
Post a Comment