Fake Certificate Racket: Police Raids Coaching Centre In Odisha’s Balangir; Owners Detained

Balangir: Two days after some fake certificates were detected by postal authorities in Odisha’s Balangir district, police stepped up its probe and traced the racket at a coaching centre here on Saturday.

According to sources, police have seized several forged mark sheets, certificates, verification reports, seals and a diary and detained proprietors of the coaching centre near Balangir College, Manoj Mishra, and Alok Udgata, besides eight candidates who had submitted the fake certificates, SDPO Tofan Bag told the media.

He informed that a special team was formed to investigate the complaint lodged by Superintendent of Balangir head post office Rajendra Pattnaik, alleging that around 37 candidates who had applied for vacancies in the department recently, produced fake matric certificates.

The Postal department had published an advertisement around 10 days back to fill 83 vacancies in the posts of branch post manager (BPM), assistant BPM and daak sevak. On verification, discrepancies were found in 37 of the matric certificates submitted by applicants and they were obtained from Uttar Pradesh. While these applicants had scored above 98 per cent and one 99 per cent in English, they reportedly flunked the English test conducted by the department on Thursday. When questioned, one student confessed that she had purchased her board examination certificate by paying Rs 50,000.

Bag said that investigation revealed that Reliance Education Complex was the epicentre of the racket and accordingly a raid was carried out. “Blank certificates of several universities and college were found in the computers at the institutes,” he said.

Seals, stamps and a diary, which contains the names of people who paid for the certificates, have also been seized, he further added.

The SDPO added that all evidence are being examined.