Rachakonda police busts fake certificates racket, three persons arrested

Hyderabad: The Rachakonda police busted a fake educational certificate racket on Wednesday ad arrested three persons.

Three persons including a woman were arrested for forging fake certificates of 11 universities, fake GRE score sheets were arrested. Materials used to prepare the fake certificates have been seized in a joint raid conducted by the sleuths of Special Operations Team (SOT), LB Nagar zone along with Chaitanyapuri police.

The trio managed to collect information of dropouts and failed students from  colleges and managed to target students and their parents promising to provide them certificates and other documents to get visa to UK, US and other foreign countries.

The accused had collected huge amount from visa aspirants for the docuemnts, said Mahesh Bhagwat, Rachakonda police commissioner during a press meet on Wednesday.

The prime accused M Anand Kumar, confessed that after completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts from JNTU, he started a flex designing unit in a rented house in Chaitanyapuri, the commissioner said.

As part of the plan to make easy money, he started forging certificates and educational documents.

 At the same time he came in contact with co accused Mallepaka Hemanth and Kalyan who were running educational consultancies at Malakpet and Saroor Nagar in the name of Ricco Consultancy .

Anand Kumar used to forge the fake certificates and other documents using   Adobe Photoshop software at his shop. Anand Kumar prepared the certificates and supplied it to Hemanth who provided it to students after collecting Rs 50,000 to 60,000 from them. Shaheen helped Hemanth in the racket, Mahesh Bhagwat said.

Eight months back Anand came in contact with the co-accused Shaik Shaheen who was working as a visa processing counsellor in Way 4 Overseas consultancy, Saroornagar.

Shaik Shaheen played a major role by collecting the prepared and forged educational certificates, arranging them in sequence with her boss Kalyan's concern (Kalyan is absconding) and collecting her margin money.

Anand and Hemanth were arrested in a combined raid conducted by Rachakonda police at Art Line Arts Flex Design shop  in Chaitanyapuri, on Tuesday and other accused Shaik Shaheen was arrested at her office in Chaitanyapuri in the early hours of Wednesday.

Police seized  a large number of fake educational certificates of various universities and other fake supported documents, computer, scanner, rubber stamps, and other incriminating material from their possession.

"Students who are getting forged educational certificates to get visas to go to foreign countries and to get placement in IT and private sector are advised to be careful about bogus overseas or local consultants and not to indulge in getting fake certificates," the police commissioner said.