NEW DELHI: Six men have been arrested for allegedly running a pan-India racket of fake education board certificates and cheating over 20,000 people by issuing them fake marksheets and certificates, said Delhi Police on Friday.
Police are also investigating several persons who got fake certificates printed by the accused and are employed in various government departments, such as Uttar Pradesh Police, Railways, India Post, Army and paramilitary forces.
The accused were identified as Prashant Solanki (22), Baljeet Singh (24), Altaaf Raja (22), Lakshya Rathore (24), Ramdev Sharma (65) and Shiv Prasad Pandey (65).
Ravindra Yadav, Joint Commissioner of Police (Eastern Range) said that on September 11, a man filed a complaint about a fake marksheet of the 'Board of Higher Secondary Education, Delhi'.
The complaint was marked to ASI Naresh, who verified the marksheet with the Ministry of Human Resources Development and the Delhi government's Education Department, and found it to be counterfeit.
Soon, a team led by DCP (Shahdara) Nupur Prasad was formed to nab the accused.
During the probe, it was found that one Solanki had given the fake marksheet to the complainant. He was arrested from Delhi's Gokalpuri area in September. Solanki revealed to police that he worked as a computer operator and used to get the fake marksheets from one Baljeet Singh.
Singh was subsequently arrested from Delhi's Burari, and he was found to be the director of the fake Board of Higher Education. Singh had replaced one Manger Ram Acharya, alias Manish Pratap Singh. Acharya was the mastermind of the racket of fake boards and is currently in jail in Rajasthan. Over the next few months, the other accused were arrested from different parts of Capital and other states.
Police said that the accused had also developed a website with the URL address http://bhsedelhiboard.net to establish credibility among the public.
The fake Board, which has regional offices running in remote localities, used to charge Rs 10,000 to 50,000 from private schools for giving affiliation, said a police officer.
Police seized over 17,000 counterfeit blank as well as forged marksheets, certificates, degrees, migration certificates and admit cards of universities like Sunrise University, Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj University, Kanpur, etc.