Education scam unearthed in Punjab

CHANDIGARH: Haryana might have earned notoriety for job scams and leakage of competitive examination papers, but the state police have now exposed one more racket under which thousands of Class X and Class XII certificates were issued by the Board of School and Technical Education Bilaspur - a board registered in Haryana.

Interestingly, the board had temporary affiliation and equivalence with the Chhattisgarh Board of Secondary Education, Raipur, from November 7, 2012 till March 7, 2015.

The Haryana police investigation has now revealed that around 3,300 fake certificates of Class XII and Class X were found to be released by those running the Board of School and Technical Education from 2015-2022 on the back date on a payment of around Rs 50,000.

While the police have already arrested one of the founder trustees of the board, Nitin Lamba, another founder trustee Gagan Kumar Chugh is yet to be arrested.

Even the Punjab and Haryana high court had recently dismissed Chugh's plea for anticipatory bail and Lamba's regular bail considering the "gravity, magnitude and the offence having the effect on the large section of society".

The record of these 3,000 certificates surfaced after scientific analysis of IP addresses of computers seized from the accused's premises. A special investigation team (SIT) of the Haryana police is in progress of retrieving all the other certificates, which according to them could be large in number.

According to Amit Dahiya, superintendent of police (crime), it was a case of large scam which was being operated by Gagan Kumar Chugh, Nitin Lamba and the other co-accused by which they formulated a board/trust and got it registered in district Hisar but got the equivalence certificate from the state of Chhattisgarh.

He said although the equivalence remained in operation from the date of grant on November 7, 2012 till the time of its cancellation on March 7, 2015, it was a case where the board even after the cancellation of the equivalence by the state of Chhattisgarh continued issuing certificates to various students by putting a back date from the year 2012 to 2015.

During the investigation, the police found that Chugh was operating a Bombay Institute Centre at Abhor, Punjab. It was also found that he was instrumental in issuance of around 3,300 certificates, ranging from years 2015 to 2022, against an amount of approximately Rs 50,000 (for each certificate) from different students and the board itself issued certificates on which dates of years from 2012 to 2015 had been mentioned, he said.

All these beneficiaries were fresh students and were not enrolled with the board prior to 2015, the investigation revealed.

The SIT has also been probing the beneficiaries of such certificates and is expecting there could be more than 3,000 beneficiaries.


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