1,100 students got scholarship fraudulently, reveals CBI probe

SHIMLA : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is on the trail of a ₹250-crore scholarship scam in which this amount, meant for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC & ST) students under Central and state schemes, was actually disbursed through fake admissions.

In the latest, the central agency has put the number of students who benefited fraudulently at 1,100.

The scam was first unearthed last year following reports that students of government schools in the tribal Spiti valley in Lahaul and Spiti district had not been paid scholarship.

In September 2019, the state cabinet under chairmanship of chief minister Jai Ram Thakur recommended a CBI inquiry into the alleged scam in the disbursal of scholarships under state and centrally-sponsored schemes for reserved category students in Himachal.

The state education department also decided to conduct an internal probe.

“KC Group of Institutions, Nawanshahr, Punjab, embezzled ₹11 crore through 1,100 fake admissions,” a CBI source said, adding the agency visited remote locations in Himachal to verify addresses of students that purportedly studied at the Una campus of the KC Group, but found a false trail of information.

During investigation, the CBI

has found 1,200 students took admission in the institute from 2013-2017 and applied for scholarships; 1,100 were fake.

The CBI says that an analysis of documents and interrogation of the accused found out that the KC Group misappropriated funds in connivance with the officers of the Himachal education department and bank officials.

To date, 12 people have been booked in the case.