Fake degree case: Tomar sent to 2-day police custody, says being harassed by Delhi Police

Police officials asked former Delhi law minister Jitender Singh Tomar to find his records at Bihar’s Awadh University but he could not find his name in the official register, television news channel NDTV quoted a source as saying on Saturday.

Two days after it was revealed that Jitender Singh Tomar had attended Rajdhani College in Delhi at the same time he claimed to have been an undergraduate student in Uttar Pradesh, it now emerges the ex-law minister had also taken admission in another Delhi University college.

Investigators said Saturday that Tomar — arrested on charges of faking his educational qualifications and under suspicion of being involved in a larger fake-degree racket — enrolled at DU’s Shivaji College for a BSc (botany) course in 1983-84, two years before he got admission in Rajdhani College to pursue BA (economics).

Tomar left Shivaji College, in west Delhi’s Raja Garden and a stone’s throw from Rajdhani College, after failing in the first year exam.

In 1985, he joined Rajdhani but quit, without a degree, in the third year. Going by DU records and his claims, Tomar was a student at both Rajdhani College and Awadh University’s KS Saket PG College in Faizabad, from where he is learnt to have procured a fake BSc degree, for a period of over a year.

Tomar — whose police remand was extended by two days on Saturday — has been accompanying investigators on a tour of colleges and universities in UP and Bihar that he claims to have attended. Apart from Faizabad, he was taken to Munger Law College, affiliated to Tilkamanjhi Bhagalpur University in Bihar, where he says he did his LLB. Investigators said Tomar’s name existed on a register but no other records were found. College authority claimed a termite infestation had destroyed some records.

“Prime facie it appears the records were deliberately destroyed. We have served notice to college and university authorities to explain this,” said an investigating officer. Like in Faizabad, Tomar failed to recognize the Munger college, the officer added.

Seeking 11 more days in custody for the AAP leader, the police told a city court, “Every document produced by him is fabricated and it needs to be probed who the people in connivance with Tomar in procuring these documents are.”

Tomar alleged that Delhi Police harassed him during his four-day police custody. He told metropolitan magistrate Pooja Aggarwal that he was harassed by Delhi Police during his custody.

"Every document produced by him (Tomar) is fabricated and it needs to be probed who are the people in connivance with Tomar in procuring these documents," police told the court.

Police are now looking for one Indu Gupta, a friend of Tomar who reportedly runs an educational institute in Delhi. They suspect the two operated the racket.

“After confirmation that all documents related to Tomar’s BSc and LLB degrees were fake and forged, we are now probing the case to expose people who helped them procure such documents. The roots of this racket seem to go into various states. More arrests could follow,” joint CP (southeastern range) RS Krishnia said.

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