Fake certificate racket busted in Hyderabad, seven held

The police seized certificates of various universities and institutions, 11 cell phones, four laptops and cash Rs. 20,000 from them

Hyderabad: Seven persons who were allegedly involved in arranging fake and fraudulently obtained certificates of various universities, were arrested by the Commissioner’s Task Force (south) team on Tuesday.

The police seized certificates of various universities and institutions, 11 cell phones, four laptops and cash Rs. 20,000 from them.

The arrested persons were identified as Mohd Habeeb, Abdul Rauf, Shahnawaz Khan, Mohd Zubair, Salman Khan and Mohd Abdul Sattar. The main suspect in the case Sunil Kapoor of Delhi is absconding.

“Sunil supplied the certificates to Habeeb who runs Fly Abroad Consultancy and Rauf, who runs Eduwise Overseas Consultancy, in the city. The duo along with their other associates sold the certificates to persons intending to go abroad for higher education. Each certificate was sold for a price between Rs. 30,000 and Rs. 40,000,” said DCP Task Force, Gummi Chakravarthy. On a tip off, the police caught the gang members.

“So far, 70 persons took these fake certificates and nearly 30 of them have gone abroad using them,” he said adding, “we have a list of such persons and will be soon writing to the universities where they are pursuing their education about the case.”

The police said they were also verifying the role of a few of the employees of the universities from where the certificates were allegedly obtained through fraudulent methods.

Added Chakravarthy, “we suspect the employees took money and uploaded the details of the certificates in their records or are positively replying to the email enquiries from foreign universities about the authenticity of the certificates.”