The Hindu : New Delhi News : Fake admission racket busted

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 09, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Fake admission racket busted

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 8. Three persons have been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi police for allegedly duping over a dozen young men in the name of providing them admission in reputed management institutions.

The Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (EOW), K.K. Vyas, said a complaint was received in the first week of August about a gang duping people in the name of promising them admission to Symbiosis Institute of Management in Pune and K.J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research in Mumbai. Following investigations by a team jointly headed by three sub-inspectors, the police first arrested Bobby Saxena, a resident of Vivek Vihar in East Delhi, and then Deepak Chatterjee alias Deepak Kashyap, a Ghaziabad resident. Raj Kumar Soni of Karol Bagh was the last one to be arrested.

Investigations revealed that Deepak, a science graduate from Delhi University, used to entice people -- he used to approach them with the help of acquaintances -- into paying huge sums of money for getting admissions to premier institutes. About a dozen aspirants from Ludhiana in Punjab had paid up a total of Rs. 63.5 lakhs in cash and Rs. 16.5 lakhs in the form of demand drafts to the accused in the month of March and April.

As per plan, Deepak, Bobby and Raj Kumar took all the candidates to Mumbai by air. The aspirants were given forms which they duly filled up and even the demand drafts were received with acknowledgements.

All the documents later turned out to be forged. The aspirants also met another accused Vikas who posed as Shinde, the "owner" of Somaiya Institute.

Similarly, in Pune, an aspirant was taken to one Pandey, who posed as the private assistant to the education minister of Maharashtra. He assured the aspirant that his admission was confirmed. The fraud was detected on July 1 in Mumbai and July 5 in Pune when the aspirants reached the institutes only to find that no application had been moved for their candidature.

Bobby, a Class IX dropout, had taken care of the financial part of the racket. He had opened accounts in the Bank of Punjab, Bandra, in the name of "SIMSR", which meant Silicon Institute of Management Studies and Research (a non-existent institute). He also got visiting cards printed in the name of the "institute". The money, deposited in the account of the institute, was later transferred to another account at Preet Vihar Branch of Bank of Punjab. The police said Bobby had earlier been involved in five cases of cheating in Noida, Faridabad, Mumbai and Delhi.

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