The city crime branch arrested an education consultancy operator in connection with fake education certificate racket. The accused who were operating the racket from last two years have allegedly sold over 200 fake certificates of reputed universities across India, the police also suspects role of respective universities officials.
The racket came to light when API Bharat Ghone of crime branch unit 11 received a tip-off that Prime Sapphire Education a consultancy located at Borivali East had been selling fake graduate and post graduate certificates.
The crime branch sleuths approached them posing as a student for Bsc and Bcom certificates, the accused asked him to pay ₹1.31 lakh for certificates. On Wednesday the owner Pritesh Jain, 34 and his employee Raviprakash Maurya, 26 we're held red handed while giving the certificates of Calorax university also known as Sabarmati university and Dr A P J Abdul Kalam university in Madhya Pradesh.
"The investigation revealed that the accused have so far sold close to 200 certificates, for each they were charging ₹1 lakh to ₹2 lakh. We have so far seized a laptop, hard disk, pen drive and cash along with multiple certificates, we will verify these certificates with the concerned universities," said Sangramsinh Nishandar, DCP crime branch.
Some times the victims were taken to consultancy, were they registered them as a students and mark their attendance before issuing them certificates, as a reason involvement of university officials could not be ruled out, said a crime branch official.
The accused were taking details from popular job portals and target those people who require education certificates for jobs or for internal job promotions, said an official.
