Bengaluru police have arrested five people in connection with a fake mark sheet and degree certificate scam that has been operation for two years, The News Minute reported on Friday. Deputy Commissioner of Police HD Ananda Kumar said the accused handed out around 1.6 lakh fake mark sheets and degree certificates for several courses including engineering, arts, science and medical courses.

The Fraud and Misappropriation Wing of the Central Crime Branch identified the five accused as Kunal Kumar Mondal, Sandesh Agarwal, Dipankar Sen, Sourav Kumar Sharma alias Gourav Kumar and Aruna. They reportedly charged people between Rs 25,000 and Rs 30,000. Police suspect the involvement of college officials in the racket as well.

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“On April 19, we arrested a man named Kunal Kumar Mondal after we received a tip that he was selling fake marks cards. Mondal is originally from Bihar and had moved to Bengaluru in 2011,” Kumar told the news portal. Based on the information Mondal shared during the interrogation, the police traced the other accused in the case. “Dipankar Sen spilled the beans on Sourav Kumar Sharma, who was located in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad. We arrested him on May 2. Sharma revealed that Sandesh Agarwal was the one running the show. He was running an agency named Double Eight Consultants in New Delhi. We picked up Agarwal on May 2 itself,” the news website quoted Kumar as saying.

Agarwal hired associates and assigned them the designation of “education consultants’ within his agency. His recruits approached potential clients and convinced them to buy the fake documents.

Central Crime Branch Officials said they suspect that Agarwal had around 180 agents working with 88 consultancy firms across the country for over two years now. Police found 732 mark sheets at the Double Eight Consultancy premises. “As of now we know that they printed fake marks cards, transfer certificates, provisional certificates and degree certificates for 38 top colleges including Allahabad University, Karnataka State University, The Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University, Karnataka Open University, Dr BR Ambedkar University, Dr CV Raman University, Sikkim University, Jodhpur National University among others,” Kumar said.