Hyderabad: The Special Investigating Team (SIT) received a major lead on universities from other states that issue fraudulent educational certificates and make a killing.
An emergency meeting of senior SIT officials has been called for in the wake of the revelations made by Prashanth Pillai and S.S. Kushwah from Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan University (SRKU), who have been arrested for issuing certificates to students, who had not written the exams.
On Thursday, three special SIT teams left for Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh to coordinate with teams that have done the groundwork, police sources said.
This will be the first time that the city police will be investigating frauds committed by universities of other states, including selling certificates to students from Hyderabad, said A.R. Srinivas, joint commissioner of (SIT & crimes). He added that they will soon get a breakthrough.
“So far we have arrested seven local educational consultants, 19 students and 12 parents and seized 44 certificates,” he said.
SIT officials have collected evidence against the senior management of SRKU, Madurai Kamaraj university (Chennai) and Glocal university in Sarangpur, Uttar Pradesh.
Meanwhile, many students and their parents are panic-stricken as they have ‘bought’ certificates from these universities and are pursuing higher studies or working abroad.
On completion of the investigation, SIT will submit a list of students, varsity and university management personnel involved in the racket. They all would be prosecuted. All embassies will be given particulars of such students and employees, police sources revealed.
In Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar over 23,000 persons have secured government jobs based on their fake educational certificates, a senior police official said. The numbers could be less in Telangana but all those who have used them will lose their jobs, he said.
There should be a special cell in Telangana State council of higher education (TSCHE) to keep track of such universities so that thousands of students could be saved from future career shocks. Police should crack the whip against agents involved in the racket as Hyderabad has become a hub for them. If these universities have UGC recognition they will be blacklisted, said Rajaram, assistant professor in the department of English and foreign languages.
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