SIT exposes 55 govt teachers with forged documents

POLICE CHECKED DOCUMENTS OF PRIMARY SCHOOLTEACHERS APPOINTED FROM 2012 TO 2016

DEHRADUN: A special investigative team (SIT) constituted by school education minister Arvind Pandey has exposed 55 government schoolteachers, who got job on the basis of forged documents.

Headed by additional superintendent of police (ASP) Shweta Chaubey, the SIT was formed in July, 2017 to probe into complaints against some government teachers.

“When the SIT was formed, the government had not given any specific instructions regarding the probe. We wrote to the government asking them to narrow down the period which needed to be probed. While we waited for a mandate from the government to clarify the same, I issued a notification in all the newspapers stating that in case any person has any information regarding a government teacher who is working on the basis of fake documents, they should contact us,” he said.

Chaubey said the SIT received a number of responses involving teachers from primary schools to principals.“By October, we received a response from the government stating that we had to probe the primary school teachers appointed from 2012 to 2016. After we told them that we had received complaints of many appointed before this period, it was decided that we will investigate all the complaints as well,” Chaubey said.

The ASP said there were around 7,000 government teachers appointed between 2012 to 2016.“The biggest hurdle was commissioning their documents. During investigation, we realised that in many cases, the school education department did not even have the documents of the appointed teachers. After we demanded it from them, they in turn asked the teachers for it,” Chaubey said.

Over the course of the investigation, SIT has so far found six teachers who submitted fake certificates of class 10 or class 12 while seven had submitted fake caste or domicile certificates.

10 had submitted fake B.Ed degrees whereas 13 had submitted degrees either did not qualify them to be a government school teacher or attained from institutes or universities which are not recognised.