Fake degree racket busted, 4 arrested

Four persons have been arrested for allegedly selling fake marksheets, degrees and diplomas for Rs 10,000 to Rs 2 lakh in Janakpuri area of west Delhi, police said today.
The accused told police that they have provided at least 2,000 fake degrees of MBBS, MBA and PhD to people across the country.
It is suspected that those who bought the fake degrees from the accused are working in high-ranking jobs or are enrolled as teachers, police said.
Till now, police has seized close to 200 such printed fake degrees along with computers that have soft copies of the purported fake degrees provided by the accused, they added.

The four accused used to pose as educational consultants and had trapped people from at least four states -- Bihar, Haryana, Punjab and Delhi, police said.
The accused have been identified as Rupesh Kumar, Rithesh Kumar, Someer Kumar and Mukesh Thakur. The kingpin Rupesh has studied till class XII.

"The accused used to offer a range of degrees- from CBSE school certificates of Class X and XII boards to those till PhD and medical school. They used to charge anywhere between Rs 5,000 to even Rs 5 lakh. We are gathering more details on it," said a senior police officer.

While they are yet to track any, police is suspecting that using these fake degrees, many would be practicing medicine illegally in nondescript villages where the probability of getting caught is lesser.
The gang was busted after a man Shahbazul Haque from Tilak Nagar contacted Rupesh for admission in class X.
"He was initially told that he would be provided the Class X certificate after undergoing a brief training and then appearing for the boards through distance education. But soon after, the training course was stopped and he was handed over the degree and told that he does not need to write any exam and that his certificate was ready," said the officer.

Rupesh sent Haque a Class X mark sheet through WhatsApp issued by Intermediate Schooling Council of Education (ICSE). Rupesh saw that the date of issuance of the degree was 2003 and he found that it was fake.
The accused had created a fake website www.Inidaicse.In from where the certificate could be downloaded. That initially deceived the complainant who thought it was genuine. But he was shocked when he later discovered that the degree was fake and approached police.
"The accused had suffix the website name with (.In) to deceive students. We will also approach the degree holders to know whether they had any inkling about the fake degrees," added the senior police official.

They arrested accused used to obtain fake degrees from Someer Kumar and his associates through courier, email and WhatsApp.
Someer, in turn, used to obtain degrees from another person who is from Bhiwani. The other co-accused are still at large and raids are being conducted to nab them, said the officer.