By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: How can a Government with 25 agencies under its aegis not be aware of a fraud that has been active on such a massive scale and for such a long period?? This can happen only when BJD leaders are themselves involved, BJP’s State president Manmohan Samal adding demanded a CBI probe into the scam in Balangir.
Till date, near about 20 people arrested in connection with the fake academic certificate racket in Odisha’s Balangir district. The BJP’s State president Samal urged for a detailed CBI probe into the racket and stringent action against all the accused. Sources said that the accused persons were charging between Rs 50,000 and Rs 5 lakh for the fake certificates. The racket operated from a private coaching centre in Balangir is likely to have spread to other districts in the state.
The racket had come to the fore after one Rajat Kumar Nayak of Chandatora under Sindhekela police limits had alleged that he had paid Rs 5 lakh to mastermind Manoj Mishra and his aide Aloka Ugata who had promised him a job in lieu of the money.
Manoj, owner of Reliance Educational Complex in Balangir from where the racket was operating, and Aloka had asked Nayak to apply for the Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) post in February this year and offered him a Class-X certificate of Madhyamik Sikshya Parishad, Uttar Pradesh. Nayak applied for the job but he, later, came to know that the academic certificate provided by Mishra and Ugata was a fake one. He had lodged a complaint in this regard with Balangir Town Police Station.
On the basis of the prima facie evidence, police arrested 19 persons, including Mishra and Ugata besides seizing Rs 3.67 lakh, four computers, one laptop, three printers, marksheets of at least 41 universities across the country, a scanner, a Xerox machine, several other equipment, 5-6 land documents and fake rubber stamps of rubber stamps of 27 officials in ranks of joint director, project director and tehsildar, from the accused persons.
