Jaipur: Three men, including the chancellor and the registrar of a private university in Uttar Pradesh, were arrested by Rajasthan’s Special Operations Group (SOG) on Saturday for giving out fake degrees. This happened during the recruitment exam for Physical Training Instructors (PTI) in 2022.
The police discovered that after catching the chancellor and registrar of Om Prakash Joginder Singh (OPJS) University for issuing over 43,000 fake degrees, they found out that Jagadish Singh (JS) University in Shikohabad, Uttar Pradesh, had also given fake Bachelor of Physical Education (BPEd) degrees to several candidates from Rajasthan who took the PTI-2022 exam.
According to VK Singh, an officer with the SOG, the JS University was established by Sukesh Kumar in 2015. He is both the chancellor of the university and a principal at Agra Government College. Along with registrar Nandan Mishra and an individual named Ajay Bhardwaj, these three men sold thousands of fake degrees to students over the last ten years for money.
They issued BPEd degrees to students who never even attended the university but used backdated dates. On Saturday, the police arrested Kumar, Mishra, and Bhardwaj.
So far, 108 out of 254 JS alumni that took the PTI-2022 exam were found to have fake degrees. These candidates claimed to have received their degrees in 2022, even though the university only accepts 100 students in the BPEd program.
Additionally, many candidates submitted degrees from JS University during their application process, even if they mentioned a different university before.
On Saturday, Sukesh Kumar was trying to leave the country when the SOG called him. He was arrested at the Delhi airport. Meanwhile, Ajay Bhardwaj was found to have ties to a notorious paper leak mastermind in Rajasthan. Bhardwaj also wanted to open two more private universities in Dungarpur, Rajasthan, and Meghalaya.
In January, the University Grants Commission (UGC) stopped the university from giving out PhD degrees due to integrity issues. Following the PTI-2022 verification, the SOG conducted a secret operation and arrested a middleman named Pradeep Sharma, who was linked to both OPJS University and another institution in Uttarakhand.
As of now, the SOG has arrested 16 people involved in this fake degree scam.
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