Pleasant look, convincing skills: How fraudsters recruited a failed medical practitioner to head fake edu board

A native of Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, Shiv Prasad Pandey claimed to have done a five-year diploma in ayurveda from a government college in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district in the 1970s.

His confidence, pleasant appearance and ability to convince people propelled 65-year-old Shiv Prasad Pandey from a failed medical practitioner to the chairman of a fake education board, interrogators said.

Shiv Prasad Pandey, the chairman of fake education board, in Delhi police custody on Friday. (Sushil Kumar/HT Photo)

These ‘qualities’ made Pandey the ‘de facto choice’ for the chairman when a group of fraudsters found an opportunity to take over an education racket after its ‘mastermind’, Mange Ram Acharya, landed in jail in 2011.

The members of the gang rendered leaderless by Acharya’s arrest created a fake education board -- an offshoot of the existing racket – and decided to make easy money, said Ravindra Yadav, Joint CP (Eastern Range).

“They needed a face to lead them and happened to come across Pandey who was a man of few words but was very sharp and had great convincing abilities. He dressed in suit and tie and did not appear like a cheat. They did not waste any time and quickly garlanded him to make him the board’s chairman. They splashed his photos on the board’s website to appear as genuine,” an investigator not authorised to speak to the media told Hindustan Times.

“He said he received more attention at conferences, conclaves and seminars he attended as the board’s chairman.”

The board’s three main offices were located in Delhi and Lucknow and Pandey moved between these two cities. The police are yet to ascertain his financial worth, but investigators said that one of his bank accounts had shown a transaction of Rs 60 lakh since January 2015.

A native of Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, Pandey claimed to have done a five-year diploma in ayurveda from a government college in Bihar’s Bhagalpur district in the 1970s. This is yet to be verified.

“Pandey then set up a clinic in Pratapgarh that failed to take off. He then moved his clinic to Chembur in Mumbai, near Raj Kapoor’s studio, RK Films,” said the investigator.

It was at this clinic that Pandey met another man who introduced him to the education racket and the prospects of easy money. Pandey was allegedly remote-controlled by the man who remains on the run, police said.