Tomar fallout: Police verifying degrees of 2,000 Delhi lawyers
NEW DELHI: About 2,000 practising advocates registered with the city’s bar council have degrees from the same college and university as AAP leader Jitender Singh Tomar who is in jail facing charges of faking his academic degrees, Delhi Police sources told HT on Friday.
The lawyers who submitted graduation degrees from Awadh and Bundelkhand universities and law degrees from Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University are now on police’s radar and their documents will be scrutinised, officials said, while the bar council too will conduct a verification drive.
Police launched a multipronged investigation after it arrested Tri Nagar MLA Tomar who was forced to quit as Delhi’s law minister this month for allegedly using forged academic documents — including mark sheets, a BSc degree, provisional docu- ments and a law degree — to enrol as an advocate in 2010.
Sources said a 21-member team in Bundelkhand was probing apparent discrepancies in the admission procedure of the university there with investigators pulling student records of the past two decades.
“The arrest has opened a can of worms. If the degrees submitted by these advocates are found to be fake, fresh FIRs will be registered and more arrests made,” said an official. “The team of officers will return to Delhi within this week.”