The letters asked the university administration to avoid taking action against the 60 students.
Agra police have lodged an FIR against 60 students and unidentified people for allegedly forging signatures of an SIT officer in connection with a fake B.Ed degree case.
The case is related to the 2004-05 B.Ed degree scam investigated by UP Police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT). Around two months ago, the agency said that 4,766 students of Agra’s Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BAU) had fake degrees.
In a twist to the case, the university last month received three letters, purportedly signed by an SIT officer, saying that 60 of the 4,766 students were wrongly included in the list. The letters asked the university administration to avoid taking action against the 60 students.
Suspecting a foul play, BAU has returned the three letters to SIT for verification. On Friday, the university received a reply from SIT, stating that it had not issued any such letter and asked the university to take action.
University’s officiating Registrar Dr Rajeev Kumar on Saturday got an FIR registered against the 60 students at Hariparvat police station in Agra.
The case has been lodged under IPC sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy), said station house officer, Hariparvat police station, Ajay Kaushal.
The SHO said, “There are just names and roll numbers of 60 people. After collecting their address, notices would be sent to them, asking them to reply how their names got mentioned in the fake list. On the basis of their reply, next course of action would be taken.”
Kumar told The Indian Express that on January 21, the university received three letters carrying the signature of a deputy superintendent-rank officer of SIT. “The letters stated that the SIT had wrongly sent names of 60 people in their earlier list and requested not to take any action against them,” said Kumar, adding that each letter had 20 names and was dated January 10.
Suspecting that the letters were fake, the varsity administration re-sent them to SIT through e-mail for verification. The next day, the SIT replied that it had not dispatched any such letters and asked BAU to register a case.
In December last year, the SIT had sent a report, declaring that 4,766 people received fake B.Ed marksheets from the university, said Kumar. Of them, marksheets of 1,084 students were tampered with, 45 students had duplicate roll numbers, and roll numbers of 3,637 people did not match with the university record.
The registrar said the SIT report was placed before the university’s executive council which decided that the names and roll numbers of 4,766 people should be uploaded on the university’s website. “The idea to upload the names on our website and publication in newspaper was that if any person has any evidence in their support, they could present it. We sought a reply from them on 17 different points. So far, 1,306 people had filed a reply and we are forwarding them to the SIT to look into it,” said Kumar.