Hyderabad: Fake educational certificate racket busted, 4 arrested

Hyderabad: A fake educational certificate racket was busted and four persons, including a woman, were arrested by the Rachakonda Special Operations Team along with the Chaitanyapuri police on Tuesday.

The arrested persons were V Rohith Kumar, an IT employee from HITEC City, V. Srinivasa Rao from Yousufguda, S.Lakshmi (30), Managing Director of SL Overseas Educational Consultancy from Saroornagar and G.Sai Pranay (25), a youngster from Sitaphalmandi who had obtained fake certificates with the intention of going abroad.

According to the police, Lakshmi, an engineering graduate, earlier worked for an educational consultancy for a brief period after which she setup her own business at Chaitanyapuri, offering visa processing services to students wanting to study abroad including in the United Kingdom, USA, Canada and Australia.

“She then began preparing fake educational certificates with the help of Srinivas Rao and Rohith Kumar. She charged Rs.1 lakh from each candidate and gave nearly Rs.50,000 to Srinivas Rao,” Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh Bhagwat said.

Police said Rohith Kumar forged the certificates using Adobe Photoshop software on his laptop.

“He scanned and saved formats of all educational certificates of various colleges and universities including JNTU, Kakatiya University, Acharya Nagarjuna, Anna University and other universities across the country,” Bhagwat said, adding that the complainant, a youngster from the city, had approached the consultancy with his intermediate certificates asking for help for documentation and visa to go for graduation in the US. He was surprised when they took Rs.1lakh and gave fake certificates of Kakatiya University and also a recommendation letter for a master’s programme, after which he approached the police.

Sai Pranay, who did not even complete his graduation, had obtained fake graduation certificates of Kakatiya University with an intention to go to abroad for higher studies and job placement.

Police said most of the students are getting the fake and forged educational certificates to satisfy the USA, UK, Canada, Australia Consulates requirements to get VISAs as well as to get placements in IT sector and to get jobs in private sectors.

Police seized fake consolidated marks memo, degree certificates, provisional certificates and experience certificates from the consultancy.