Delhi: Fake education board blackmailed, extorted own candidates

The police, after examining nearly 17,000 fake or forged recovered documents, said that the gang indulged in blackmailing and extortion from candidates who came to them.

A six-member gang, who operated a fake education board which was busted by Delhi Police on Friday, did not even spare people who obtained board exam certificates from them, investigators have found.

Chairman Shiv Prasad Pandey in police custody. (Sushil Kumar/HT PHOTO)

The fake education board, named ‘Board of Higher Secondary Education, Delhi’, allegedly dished out class X and XII marksheets and certificates as well as offered affiliations to nearly 300 schools mainly in towns and villages in north India. Six members of the gang, including its ‘chairman’ Shiv Prasad Pandey, were arrested by the police on Friday.

The police, after examining nearly 17,000 fake or forged recovered documents, said that the gang indulged in blackmailing and extortion from candidates who came to them.

Nearly five dozen documents were pending verification requests at the time of seizure. “Candidates used the board’s certificates to land jobs. Before joining, the recruiting agency would often send requests to the board to verify the authenticity of a candidate’s documents. Basically, a fake board was asked to verify a fake certificate,” Ravindra Yadav, joint CP (eastern range), told HT.

The verification requests were received from various agencies such as the Indian Army, the paramilitary forces, the Indian Railways and even anganwadi centres, added Nupur Prasad, DCP (Shahdara).

“When the board received such requests, it would call up the candidates and tell them that their employment depended on the feedback provided by them. They would then use the situation to blackmail the candidates and extort anywhere between Rs 10,000 and Rs 50,000,” said Prasad.

On Friday, the police had said that thousands of people had benefited from this fake board and had landed jobs with several government agencies. In Lucknow in 2012, thousands of youngsters had taken passports on these fake documents. Many had even landed jobs abroad.

The police are now going through all the documents recovered from the gang and are identifying the beneficiaries. “There were two kinds of beneficiaries. Individuals who took fake board exam certificates and those who obtained forged degrees of genuine institutes and schools. We are identifying all such beneficiaries and will inform the concerned ministries and departments to pursue legal action against them,” said DCP Prasad.

Other beneficiaries, polcie said, may remain undetected until their employers found out. “But as per law, they all stand the risk of being jailed when their fraud is discovered,” Ravindra Yadav had said on Friday.