Hyderabad: Five persons including an advocate and three outsourcing employees of the Osmania University (OU), were arrested today for allegedly obtaining fake transcripts from the varsity’s examination branch.
The prime accused in the case, Shaik Abdullah has been absconding, police said.
Among the arrested persons is one Shaik Saifullah who is an advocate cuum secretary of the city-based organisation DJS which trains Muslims youths in self-defence and holds protests on ‘Black Day’ every year.
The arrested persons are identified as T Ramesh, C Aravind Kumar and M Ramu who all are working as the office attenders on the contract basis at the OU’s examination branch, besides one G Santhosh Reddy, a data entry operator at a private firm, said Osmania University police station Inspector V Ashok Reddy.
Police seized fake transcripts in the name of Abdullah who is on the run apart from the photocopy of his fake degree from the arrested persons.
They are booked on charges of cheating, criminal breach of trust by public servant, using as genuine a forged document and under other relevant sections of the IPC.
Police said Abdullah, who is the elder brother of Saifullah, was working in a Jeddah-based Bin-Laden Company (a construction firm) as an engineer on a fake certificate pertaining to OU, though he did not study in OU.
A complaint in this regard was lodged by the OU Examination Controller M Kumar who found a list of the transcripts (obtained from the counters) pertaining to BE certificate on the issuing table at the Electronic Data Processing (EDP) section during a surprise check.
After verifying the applications related to the list of transcripts, he found that a specific application in the name of Abdullah showing he passed the BE (Civil) in June, 1985 was not found in records.
Kumar enquired in the engineering section (Professional -I) and found the said application was a fake certificate as no such roll number was found in BE course.
On verifying, he came to know the transcripts were prepared by the EDP section without verification of the application and that the EDP office staff M Ramu took the printout of the candidate’s transcripts.
“As his (Shaik Abdullah) office, recently asked him to show transcripts and medium certificate on suspicion of genuineness of his certificate, Abdullah informed his brother Saifullah to obtain the same from Osmania University,” the officer said, adding Saifullah in turn approached Santhosh Reddy and paid him Rs 2 lakh.
The duo then went to the OU and paid the challan.
However, when it got stuck up in the office of the Additional Controller of Examinations, Ramesh, Ramu and Aravind who were already in touch with Santhosh Reddy helped them to obtain the fake transcripts without the knowledge of office staff, the officer said.
NBWs are pending against Saifullah in connection with other cases, police said, adding his nephew Naziullah Aqil had underwent training in Pakistan and is absconding.