Rajkot: Is the Saurashtra University (SU) trying to protect anyone in the massive cash-for-admission scam busted in the homeopathy courses earlier this week?The question has been doing the rounds within the university and the education circles as the accused in the case — 41 students, dean of homoeopathy department and others have been booked under relatively mild Section 473 (attempt to commit forgery) instead of more stringent Section 467, which has a provision of 10 years or life imprisonment.University Road police, which is investigating the case, says that the university has not provided them sufficient documents that can nail the accused under stringent law.Investigation officer M D Chandravadia told TOI: “SU has given us the names of 41 students as accused, but they have taken statements of only five in writing. On the basis of these five statements, SU has made 41 students as accused. We have to investigate how all the 41 students are involved or whether some were cheated or some might have been dark and studying without knowing about the fraud. We are yet to recover the marksheets, migration certificates and letters of approval of the Central Council of Homoeopathy (CCH) that were forged.“It’s a case of forgery and therefore we need adequate documentary evidence to make a strong case against all the accused in the court. We will gather evidence, record the statements and thereafter make arrests,” he said.Coordinator Nehal Shukla of SU’s internal probe committee, which busted the scam, said, “We have recorded statements of 22 students in writing. If SU has not provided those details and other documents to the police, then it seems that the university officials are trying to protect somebody. My role got over when I submitted the report to SU. But I made the report public to ensure that no fact is suppressed and the whole fraud comes to public knowledge.”SU sub-registrar of legal department, who lodged the FIR on behalf of SU, said, “We have submitted all the photocopies of the documents, but the police are asking for original papers, including email conversation. We are in the process of providing them. We will work for that on Saturday even though it’s a holiday.”In a biggest scam of SU, the internal probe committee found that dean Dr Amitabh Joshi of SU’s homoeopathy department and principal of city-based B A Dangar Homoeopathy College Dr Kadri and his son Junaid Kadri, who allegedly preparing forged marksheets, are the masterminds of the scam.An internal probe released the report on Monday in which they found a huge cash-for-admission in Bachelors of Homoeopathy Medicine and Surgery (BHMS) was thriving in the varsity since 2012. The students were enrolled in two colleges of Rajkot and one in Amreli on the basis of forged marksheet.However, not naming the principals of two other colleges — B G Garia Homoeopathy College and Amreli-based Vasantben Vyas Homoeopathy College — in the FIR has raised eyebrows. Sources also raised the suspicion that none of the trustees of these colleges, who also play major role in admission, are named in probe report or FIR and were only warned by SU.

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