New Delhi: A BTech graduate and four others have been arrested by Delhi Police‘s crime branch for running a massive fake degree racket spanning several states.Acting on a tip-off, the inter-state cell (ISC) of the crime branch busted the network, recovering 275 forged academic documents and over 5,000 soft copies of fake credentials of various universities.The accused were allegedly selling counterfeit, often backdated, degrees, mark sheets and migration certificates from multiple universities in exchange for hefty payments. The forged documents covered a wide range of programmes, including BA, BSc, BCom, BTech, MBA, BEd and MA. During the search, police seized 20 mobile phones and six laptops that contained evidence of the operation.According to police, an officer received credible intelligence about certain educational institutions in Delhi-NCR issuing fake academic documents after charging large sums from students. Initial inquiries revealed that several coaching centre owners and university staff were complicit in this operation.“A police team was formed. It did a technical and manual surveillance, which led to the arrest of the key accused, Vicky Harjani, from Netaji Subhash Place. A search of his vehicle and office yielded 75 forged documents from universities in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Sikkim, Meghalaya and Tamil Nadu,” special commissioner of police (crime) Devesh Chandra Srivastva said.Following Harjani’s arrest and interrogation, four more persons — Vivek Gupta, Satbir Singh, Narayan Jee and Avnish Kansal — were arrested. “Vivek runs 6-7 centres in Noida and was previously wanted in a case in Shimla. Singh runs another centre in Faridabad, Narayan is a graduate from Bihar who was trying to expand his operations to Delhi-NCR, and Kansal is a BTech currently lodged in the central jail in Jaipur with a history of involvement in two other cases,” the senior officer said.During their interrogation, police learned that the group used educational call centres across Delhi-NCR and promoted their services on social media. Flyers were also distributed near student hotspots. Once students showed interest, they were asked to share personal and academic details, which were then used to generate forged documents, police said. The accused used aliases and fake identities to maintain secrecy. Preliminary forensic analysis of the seized devices revealed 5,000–5,500 soft copies of forged certificates. The syndicate reportedly involved 20–25 coaching centres as part of its network.
