Mumbai: A routine review of the junior college admissions at KJ Somaiya College of Arts and Commerce, Vidyavihar, has led the management to an admission racket. The discovery resulted in the cancellation of admission of at least 54 students from three colleges under the management. The incident exposed a possible lacuna in the centralised first-year junior college (FYJC) admission process.
The police arrested three persons who facilitated the 54 students’ admission in different streams based on forged marksheets and school leaving certificates.
The arrested persons were identified as Somaiya college clerks Mahendra Patil and Arjun Rathod, and a tout, Devendra Sayade.
The police said the FYJC admissions were orchestrated by Patil and Rathod.
The police said their accomplices, Kamleshbhai, Jitubhai and Babubhai, were on the run.
An FIR of cheating, forgery, breach of trust and criminal conspiracy was registered. Sections of the Information Technology Act were also included in the FIR.
The institutions affected include KJ Somaiya College of Science and Commerce and Shri SK Somaiya Vinay Mandir Secondary School and Junior College.
After the principal of KJ Somaiya College of Arts and Commerce College found discrepancies in the marksheets of a few students from other boards, the college started verifying the documents of all students from other boards. While the marks of students from the state board directly get verified in the system, the marks of students from other boards are manually verified at the guidance centre and then at the allotted colleges.
The authorities found students’ names, academic scores, and eligibility criteria appeared mismatched or unverifiable in many cases.
A management representative said that some students did not even belong to the schools mentioned in their documents. Not only the marksheets, the leaving certificates were also found to be forged, he added. The investigation revealed instances where admission credentials, including login IDs and passwords, were misused without proper verification from parents or guardians.
Officials learnt that the manipulation took place at the nodal guidance centre where the culprits, using their ID and password, uploaded the forged marksheets of students who paid them. “According to the complaint, the accused accepted illegal cash payments from parents of students who were otherwise ineligible for admission. They tampered with online portals uploading fake marksheets to secure seats for around 50 students. Forged marksheets featured fabricated percentages, including suspicious entries like “376-(75.2%)” and “449-(89.8%)” to deceivingly qualify students and thus they collected huge sums ranging anywhere between Rs 10 and Rs 15 lakh,” said an officer.
The police said the culprits exploited their authority for financial gain, causing significant educational loss to deserving students. Students from CBSE, ICSE, IB, IGCSE, and other boards were fraudulently admitted, bypassing the Maharashtra State Board’s merit-based system.
An official from the education department stated, “We are taking the matter seriously and will ensure that justice is served. Transparency and fairness in the admission process are paramount.” Another official said that the onus is on the college to verify the marksheets of students from other boards as their scores are not linked to the admission portal.
Another college principal said that if this can be done in a leading college, the same touts or others could be operating at other colleges too. “Not just the college staff, there were outsiders involved too. The department will have to fix the loophole,” said the principal.
