University of Pune receives over 100 forged degrees, marksheets from abroad

Pune: After the exam scam, the Pune University is now rocked by fake degree certificates, marksheets and bona fide certificates that have come for verification purposes.
Shocked by over 100 such documents which seemed blatantly forged by candidates seeking jobs in South East and Middle East countries, the varsity has now decided to approach cops to find out if there was an interstate gang that was operating and producing these fake documents.
The varsity routinely receives documents from various consulates who want to verify credentials of the candidates that are hired in the respective countries. A few of them are sometimes found to be forged or fake ones. However, the varsity authorities were shocked when they found over 100 such documents that were not genuine. The candidates who submitted these documents had applied for jobs in countries like Singapore, Iran and other countries.
The authorities suspect there is a racket that is producing such documents as they found that only the names of the original candidates were replaced with the applicants’ while the rest of the information like seat number, registration number and even the marks were the same. “After coming across the forgery in few documents, we carried out an internal inquiry under Dr Sudhakar Jadhavar, who throughly scritinized each and every document and submitted a report to me. We found over 100 such documents and the pattern seems to be similar,” said Dr Wasudev Gade, the Vice Chancellor of University of Pune.
Registrar Dr Narendra Kadu said that on the basis of internal inquiry, they have now submitted an application to the Chatushringi police station requesting them to register an offence in the case.
Dr Jadhavar, who scrutinized the documents said that the names of the applicants seemed from North India and the modus operandi was the same in almost every document. “The fraudsters seem to have got hold of one original document- degree or certificate and have made copies of the same, leaving the space for the name of the candidate blank where they filled in names of the applicants,” said Jadhavar. He also suspected this to be an insider’s job.
He pointed that though the varsity issued bona fide certificates, no such certificates are ever issued to the applicants looking for jobs outside India.
“We have written to the respective consulates to give us the original documents received from the candidates for jobs and the addresses, mentioned by the candidates while applying for job applications. We have not received any reply from them yet,” he said. Jadhavar said a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry will be better since the racket seems to be interstate.
Senior police inspector, Arun Sawant of Chatushringi police station, said they had received a complaint with some photocopies of degrees and mark sheets. “We have asked the varsity to provide us original documents so that they could be scrutinized before registering an offence,” he said.