Hyderabad; March 09 ( PMI ): The Jagtial police busted a fake certificate gang and arrested four persons, from whom 395 fake certificates and other materials were seized.
Superintendent of Police Sunpreet Singh said Bathinoju Rajitha and her husband Sravan, residents of Ramnagar, Karimnagar town, were private employees. In 2020, Rajitha came into contact with Rabi Rai of West Bengal on an online platform. Rabi Rai assured her to arrange educational certificates such as SSC, Intermediate, and Degree and Engineering if anybody wanted certificates from the National Institute of Open Schooling. Though they were fake certificates, it was difficult to differentiate them from the original.
Rai fixed rates for different certificates with SSC and Intermediate certificates for Rs.30,000, Degree for Rs.40,000, and Engineering for Rs.60,000. Rajitha used to send the details along with photographs of candidates to Rai, who used to send certificates to the prescribed addresses through a courier service. Rajitha kept half of the amount with her and sent the remaining half to the bank account of Laxmi Rai, mother of Rabi Rai.
The SP said they had arranged fake certificates for about 100 persons during the last three years. They had also collected Rs 1.30 lakh for some certificates, he said. However, the fake certificate they arranged for one Mahesh from Dharmapuri Mandal was detected during a passport inquiry, following which an inquiry was launched. Rajitha, Sravan, Mahesh, and Chandraiah, who had arranged for Mahesh to meet Rajitha, were arrested.
Rai and his mother were absconding, police said. ( PMI )