A 17-year-old student from Kolhapur, desirous of studying at NASA, is hogging limelight but for wrong reasons.
PUNE: A 17-year-old student from Kolhapur, desirous of studying at NASA, is hogging limelight but for wrong reasons.
Sridhar Kamble, who has just appeared for 12th standard exam, has found himself in the dock for faking a letter from the NASA establishment as well as forging the 10th standard result mark-sheet to inflate the total percentage.
In what appears to be the work of a fertile brain, Sridhar orchestrated a campaign at Vivekanand college in Kolhapur, where he is studying, spreading the word that he had been selected for a fellowship from the NASA as a junior scientist after he submitted a paper on 'Evolution of galaxy and the black holes'.
Since he hailed from a poor family background, going to the US was beyond his means was the refrain that duly caught the media attention.
After generating a calculated wave of sympathy, the boy was able to get an assurance from the state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and various other charities on meeting the necessary expenditure for the studies abroad.
A mandatory scrutiny of testimonials undertaken by the state welfare department of Maharashtra to facilitate Sridhar's passage to the US, however stumbled upon a suspicious looking 10th standard board exam certificate and mark-sheet submitted by him along with other documents and an e-mail, purportedly received from the NASA.
Further inquiries with the Kolhapur division of Maharashtra state board of secondary and higher secondary education revealed that Sridhar had given forged mark-sheet inflating total percentage to 93 instead of his original score of 83.86 per cent marks.
Subsequent scanning confirmed that even the documents pertaining to the NASA fellowship offer were not genuine and that the boy had also produced a forged letter of recommendation from a Physics lecturer in the college.
Ujwala Patil, Chairman of Kolhapur division of the Secondary education confirmed that the boy had submitted a forged certificate and mark-sheet with inflated percentage to the social welfare department.
We will be filing a complaint with police after getting the forged copies of the same. As per rules, the boy had to reappear for his tenth grade exams for forging its mark-sheet but will now face a ban on next five 10th standard exams by the Board and his 12th standard results will also be withheld.
Sridhar, who was in Mumbai over the weekend, told a Marathi news channel that he was sorry for his mistakes.
"I was over-ambitious, lacked proper guidance and looked for short-cuts to be successful," he said, urging the authorities to give him one more opportunity to make career.
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