Man held for running 'fake' PhD certificate racket

A 27-year-old man was today arrested for allegedly preparing fake doctorate certificates of international universities to dupe people, police said.
Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Task Force) S Chaitanya Kumar said two fake certificates of the Guinness World Records were also recovered from the accused S Nagaraju alias Sourya Pratap Rane.
These fake certificates mentioned that Nagaraju, at the age of 25, is the youngest recipient of so many PhD and other doctorate certificates, the officer added.
He said there were several cases of cheating registered against Nagaraju in different police stations here.
As per preliminary investigation, the accused cheated at least 15 persons by providing them with fake PhD and other doctorate certificates after charging them amounts ranging between Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000, the police officer said.

Nagaraju colluded with one Arputha Raj from Coimbatore ,who has an accreditation from foreign universities to give doctorates, and got 18 fake doctorates in various fields after paying Raj a huge amount, the officer said.

"Subsequently both of them started preparing fake PhD certificates and doctorates of international universities in Karmanghat here and were providing them to gullible persons after that there was no need to submit any thesis for such honorary doctorates from International universities," Kumar said.
Raj is currently absconding and efforts are on to apprehend him, said police.
"Showing his fake PhD, doctorate certificates and fake Guinness World Record certificates as genuine to celebrities, Nagaraju used to get snapshots with them. He would then make people believe he knew celebrities," Kumar said.

Police said Nagaraju would claim that he has started an Organ Donation Movement and shot 70 short films with the celebrities on social causes.
"Nagaraju further claimed that he prepared about 50 DVDs of literature of great scholars, some part of Vedas, Upanishads, etc, and used to give lectures to students on motivation. He even obtained a loan of Rs 8 lakh from a national bank showing his fake PhD certificates, doctorates and other degrees," Kumar added.