Man held for forging, selling edu certificates
NEW DELHI: Delhi Police crime branch on Monday said they had arrested a 23-year-old commerce graduate who allegedly prepared fake educational certificates of various universities and colleges and sold them to people.
More than 300 certificates and marksheets of several educational institutions across the country, excluding Delhi, were recovered from the arrested man, identified as Kapil Goyal. The institutions included Singhania University of Rajasthan, Monad University of Hapur, Manav Bharti University of Himachal Pradesh, University of Guwahati.
Police confirmed that no involvement of any staffer of these institutes was found during the probe.
Police said Goyal prepared certificates of these institutions by scanning, editing and printing with the help of computers. Laptops, colour scanner and printer, cutter machine, blank formats of certificates, marksheets, and holograms which Goyal used to prepared forged certificates, were also seized from his office in district centre, Janakpuri in west Delhi. Goyal has sold over 1,000 fake educational certificates in the last one year, said police.
Alok Kumar, joint commissioner of police (crime), said Goyal was arrested on Wednesday after the special investigation unit (SIU) received information about his illegal activities. “A trap was laid near Kashmere Gate after a tip off that Goyal will come to the area in his car and would be in possession of forged marksheets and certificates. He was arrested when he arrived in a red Tata Nexon car,” said Kumar.
During the interrogation, the joint CP said, Goyal revealed that he was in touch with owners of several coaching centres and agents based at various locations across the country. They used to communicate with each other through emails and WhatsApp.
“The agents arranged customers for Goyal. They used to send him details of the clients. Goyal prepared forged educational certificates of the desired institutes and sent them across through courier. He charged ₹7,000 for one set of forged certificates from the agents,” added Kumar.
A native of Bhiwani in Haryana, Goyal completed his B.Com from Maharshi Dayanand University in Rohtak. He appeared in several competitive exams but could not qualify. His brother Happy was involved in the same illegal activity. “As Happy was earning well, Goyal joined him in preparing fake certificates. When Happy was arrested in 2016 by the Haryana police, Goyal fled to Delhi, opened his office and continued the illegal business,” said Rajesh Deo, deputy commissioner of police (crime).