Dilip Kumar Sinha, former registrar, Dilip Kumar Mukherjee, and a former faculty member, Mukti Deb, were Thursday sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonmentFormer Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University, Dilip Kumar Sinha, former registrar, Dilip Kumar Mukherjee, and a former faculty member, Mukti Deb, were Thursday sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment in a case of conspiracy related to forged marksheets.
Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bolpur Court, Justice Arvind Mishra, announced the quantum of punishment for the three who were convicted on Wednesday.
They were convicted under section 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), while Deb was booked under section 406 (criminal breach of trust), section 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), and section 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of the Indian Penal Code.
In May 2004, Visva-Bharati lodged a complaint with Bolpur police station against Mukti Deb alleging that she served as lecturer of mathematics without submitting proper documents of her educational qualifications. The incident came to light barely four months after the Nobel medal of Rabindranath Tagore was stolen from Rabindra museum in Santiniketan.
CID sleuths arrested the former V-C on a complaint from the university authorities in connection with Deb’s “illegal” appointment in Visva-Bharati with forged marksheets and certificates of B.Sc, M.Sc and M.Phil attested by the former V-C.
Sources said when Deb was interviewed by Dilip Sinha in January 1997, she presented photocopies of “fake” certificates of B.Sc and M.Sc from Jadavpur University and M.Phil from Calcutta University. When authorities demanded original marksheet after the appointment, she told them that she lost the originals. On verifying with Jadavpur University, the Viswa-Bharati officials came to know that her degrees were fake. All her certificates were attested by Professor Dilip Sinha. A complaint was filed and the case was taken over by the CID.
