Scholarship fraud: Affiliations of 11 management, pharmacy colleges in UP under ED scanner

Some of these institutions operational only on paper to procure scholarships given by union government to SC/ST, minority community students, says official

LUCKNOW Affiliations of 11 management and pharmacy institutes in Lucknow and 10 adjoining districts are under the scanner for violation of norms, which surfaced during Enforcement Directorate (ED) investigation into the multi-crore scholarship fraud by these colleges.

On February 16, the ED had conducted raids on 11 educational institutions and found crucial evidence of irregularities in affiliations of these colleges. (Pic for representation)

“The ED has decided to recommend a detailed probe into the violation of norms by these institutions to get recognition. Some of these were operational only on paper to procure scholarships given by the union government to scheduled caste and scheduled tribe students, minority community as well as physically challenged students,” said a senior ED official.

He said one of these institutes in Lucknow existed only on papers with several proxy students enrolled with it. All these anomalies will be conveyed to competent authorities and a recommendation will be made to cancel affiliations of these colleges.

On February 16, the ED had conducted raids on 11 educational institutions and found crucial evidence of irregularities in affiliations of these colleges. On April 26, the ED arrested three people, Izhar Hussain Jafri, Ali Abbas Jafri and Ravi Prakash Gupta, associated with Hygia Group of Colleges in Lucknow, in connection with the multi-crore scholarship fraud.

Investigation revealed that the trio fraudulently obtained scholarship funds using Aadhaar cards and bank details of ineligible persons shown as students. It came to light that many of the said students were not even aware of having availed any such schemes. The three accused, in a conspiracy with agents of a payments bank, allegedly diverted scholarship funds from students’ accounts to other bank accounts, said officials.

The probe also revealed that the trio not only controlled the bank accounts of beneficiary students and illegally kept their ATM cards, phone numbers for self-operation, but also illegally used the IDs and passwords of agents and their micro-ATM machines for transfer and withdrawal of scholarship funds in cash from the bank accounts of the students at various locations.