Meerut: The Uttar Pradesh Police on Thursday busted a fake-degree racket and arrested five members of a gang who would prepare forged marksheets and certificates of private universities based in Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and UP in only 10 minutes. These forged documents looked as good as the real ones, down to the university hologram and watermark. The shady racketeers, who have been operating for the past fours years, are said to have sold thousands of fake marksheets. The members, all of whom are residents of Meerut and Ghaziabad, have been operating through a network of agents in various parts of the country. Police said that the syndicate had also attained expertise in forging marksheets of several state boards which could be purchased for anything between Rs 12,000 and Rs 40,000.Those belonging to Meerut were identified as Uma Shankar Singh, Salman Ahmad and Ajay Ram. Anil Kumar and Rajesh Singh are residents of Ghaziabad. The gang’s kingpin, Roop Singh Verma, who is currently absconding, is a resident of Kavinagar area in Ghaziabad.Police also said that several people had also got jobs in both private and government sectors on the basis of these forged documents. The gang had procured a huge database of five years of all state board students and would copy details of their namesakes in the false documents to avoid suspicion.Rajesh Pandey, senior superintendent of police (SSP), Meerut, said, “We received a tip-off on Wednesday about the suspects coming from Ghaziabad to Meerut in an SUV. Our team detained the five men near Shobhapur village in Meerut bypass. We have also seized a large number of false degree certificates of the Jharkhand State Open School, IFTM University in Moradabad, Manav Bharti University in Himachal Pradesh, SunRise University in Rajasthan and hundreds of both Central Board of Secondary Education and UP Board of High School and Intermediate Education marksheets.”According to police sources, the gang worked in close collusion with the employees of many universities and had also changed original answersheets of students who were unable to score good marks.Only four months ago, the UP Police had booked 11 people in a cheating scandal, including staffers of Meerut’s Chaudhary Charan Singh University. Around 600 medical graduates were found to have been ‘helped’ in passing their exams. Days ago, India women’s T20 captain Harmanpreet Kaur had also lost her job as a DSP rank officer in the Punjab Police after she was found to have submitted a fake graduation degree from CCSU.

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