Hyderabad: As part of an investigation into a racket that sold fake education certificates, the Cyberabad police arrested six people, including a software developer working for a leading company on Monday. However, prime accused Milli Goel, the director of MG University, a private university in north-east Meghalaya and Assam, remained at large.
The arrested accused issued fake degree certificates to over 400 people from both Telugu states in collusion with Milli. Police seized fake certificates, fake certificate-making equipment, and details of students from the accused.
Police said Garikapati Venkata Baskara Satyanarayana Sharma, who operated MG university study centre in the city, collected up to Rs 2.50 lakh from each candidate and obtained their certificates through other accused members. MG University offered distance courses from 2001 to 2016, but because their licence was not renewed, they stopped offering distance courses. Sharma, who was operating a distance learning centre at the time, continued to operate under the same guise and enticed candidates by collecting large sums of money.
Sharma contacted Milli and began issuing fake certificates with the help of Dinesh Singh, former marketing incharge, Akhilesh Semwal, former controller of examinations, and Tajinder Singh, former deputy controller of examinations at MG University. While the actual duration of the courses offered would be 2-3 years, the accused issued 'original' certificates to the candidates in less than two months after payment. Despite the university not having a licence to offer distance education courses, the accused issued certificates for six different courses, according to police.
Cyberabad police commissioner M. Stephen Ravindra said the racket was exposed after a candidate who obtained a certificate through Sharma after paying Rs 2.07 lakh was found to be a fake and filed a police complaint. After the payment was made, Geekuru Prem Kumar, a software developer, sent the victim certificates via Whatsapp.
