HYDERABAD: Three cheats, including a woman, who forged educational certificates of 11 universities and created fake GRE score sheets were nabbed in a joint raid, conducted by sleuths from special operations team (SOT), LB Nagar zone, and Chaitanyapuri police. Materials used in preparing forged certificates were seized from their possession.
They managed to collect information of dropouts and students who had failed and subsequently approached the targetted students and their parents promising to provide them sufficient educational certificates and other documents to get visas to the US, UK and other foreign countries against hefty charges, said Mahesh Bhagwat, Rachakonda police commissioner at a press conference here on Wednesday.
The prime accused M. Anand Kumar confessed before police that after completing his BFA from JNTU, he started a flex designing unit in a rented house in Chaitanyapuri styled Art Line Arts.
As the returns were meager, two years back he decided to prepare and supply fake educational certificates to students.
At the same time he came in contact with the co-accused Mallepaka Hemanth and Kalyan, who were running educational consultancies at Malakpet and Saroor Nagar in the name of Ricco Consultancy.
Kumar used to prepare fake educational certificates and other documents using Adobe Photoshop software. Anand purchased educational certificates for Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 and sold them Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 from his ‘clients’, Bhagwat said.
Eight months back Anand came in contact with another co-accused Shaik Shaheen, who was working as a visa processing counselor in Way 4 Overseas consultancy in Saroornagar.
Shaheen played a major role by collecting the prepared and forged educational certificates, and sequencing with Kalyan's concern (Kalyan is absconding).
Anand and Hemanth were arrested in a combined raid at Art Line Arts Flex Design shop on Tuesday while 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 supporting documents, computer, scanner, rubber stamps, and other incriminating material from their possession. They included 10 fake certificates of Osmania University; 14 of JNU; eight Andhra University, six Acharya Nagarjuna University; three Kakatiya University; four SRM University; five Telangana Board of Intermediate; six SSC certificates; 12 of GITAM university; six Gulbarga university; four Annamalai University; 10 GRE certificates; five Aadhar cards; four fake driving licences, and 14 loan sanction letters, among several such fake documents.
