Doctor duped of `30 L with the promise of admission for son

Pune: The latest victim of admission racketeers in the city, is a Noida-based doctor, who paid a whopping Rs30 lakh for a post-graduate seat in medicine for his son, an MBBS graduate. The complainant, Dr Kailashchand Sood, has complained to the Bharti Vidyapeeth police station that he was initially contacted by two touts in August 2012 promising to get a MD seat for his son Piyush. His son had completed his MBBS from a Sangli-based medical college and wanted an MD seat at Katraj’s Bharati Vidyapeeth medical college.
Through several transactions till December 2012, the Noida-based doctor paid a total of Rs30 lakh to the fraudsters who later promised to return the money, if the admission wasn’t secured. However, when the doctor realised that the touts had no intention to repay him, he finally lodged a case on Tuesday against the two conmen identified as Kumar Prabhanjan and Pravin Kumar.
Shockingly this isn’t the first case of its kind. Over half a dozen such cases have been registered in the last couple of months against admission touts promising seats in medical, engineering and management colleges registered in police stations at Deccan Gymkhana, Talegaon Dabhade, and Dattawadi among others.
M B Chavan, inspector in-charge of Bharti Vidyapeeth police station said, “The complainant’s son Piyush scored 58 per cent, and his chances were lesser on merit basis. While looking for contacts for management quota seats through the internet, the complainant came to know about Kumar, who runs a firm known as Shiksha World situated on BT Kawade road. The complainant mailed the documents to the firm on their official email address and later visited the firm in Pune in August 2012. The tout claimed to have good contacts and demanded Rs30 lakh from them.”
Senior inspector Bapu Kutwal from crime branch’s anti-organised crime cell said, “When the complainant was in Pune, Kumar and Pravin took him to the college made him sit in a car. After an hour later duo came out and demanded Rs20 lakh for fixing the seat in the management quota on an urgent basis. The complainant had only Rs5 lakh and promised to pay in a couple of days.”
After the token amount was paid, Piyush was asked to fill the online form for pre-admission process. Later, the duo started demanding the balance amount to be paid on an urgent basis, saying that if the amount is not paid, the seat will not be confirmed. Dr Sood then had to borrow money from relatives and collected Rs30 lakh cash and gave it to Kumar, who personally went to Noida to collect the cash. He added, “Later, in December 2012, Kumar claimed the management quota cost Rs1.5crore and promised the seat will be confirmed, even if he has not appeared for the examination. But Sood was firm and then Kumar promised to secure admission in the next academic year. Later in April 2013, he received a call, that his son’s admission was confirmed and they have to pay Rs30 lakh as college fees. But the complainant suspected something amiss, when they did not receive any confirmation from the college. On contacting the college, the officials told him that no such admission had been done.”
Dr Sood then started calling the duo who initially only repaid Rs2 lakh and later started avoiding his calls which prompted him to approach the police and lodge a complaint.