After the Mumbai Police arrested three people for allegedly running a cash racket for admission to three junior colleges, the Somaiya Trust, which runs these colleges, canceled the admissions of 50 students, which the accused had fraudulently facilitated.
Somaiya Trust Administration and Education Department officials confirmed the development on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the Mumbai Police has formed a five-member special investigation team to conduct a detailed investigation into the incident.
The Tilaknagar police on Monday arrested three people, including two employees of Somaiya Trust’s Vidyahar college, on the charge of cheating by providing seats to 50 class 11 students.
Admission fraud in KJ Somaiya College of Arts and Commerce, KJ Somaiya College of Science and Commerce and SK Somaiya Vinay Mandir Junior College has been revealed.
The scam came to light during the verification of mark sheets and school leaving certificates for Class 11 admissions for 2024-25. After some irregularities were noticed, an inquiry committee was formed under the coordination of Dr Kishan Pawar, Principal of KJ Somaiya College of Arts and Commerce, which examined the documents and found that fake documents were used for admission.
ACP headed by SIT
Considering the seriousness of the incident, senior officials of the Mumbai Police have ordered the formation of a five-member special investigation team headed by an ACP-rank officer.
Confirming the incident, Additional Commissioner of Police Mahesh Patil said, “There is a possibility that the accused may have run a recruitment racket in the past. The SIT will also look into this aspect.”
When asked whether legal action would be taken against the 50 students and their parents, a senior police officer said it was too early to comment.
“We will soon start taking the statements of the parents and based on what happened in the investigation, we will talk about taking action against the parents after legal consultation. According to the college’s complaint, the accused told the parents that they were admitting their children under ‘management quota’,” Patil said.
The three accused, Mahendra Vishnu Patil, 49; Arjun Vasaram Rathore, 43; And 55-year-old Devendra Sayade, who was arrested by the Tilaknagar police, was remanded in police custody for four days by the court on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, in a statement issued on Wednesday, Deputy Director of Education, Mumbai, Sandeep Sangave said officials from his office visited the three colleges after receiving complaints.
“It has been found that some college employees are making admissions on the basis of fake documents. Immediately after our initial investigation, all three junior colleges were directed to cancel admissions and submit a formal complaint to the police for investigation and action,” Sangawe said in his statement.
The principals of all the three colleges had informed the office of the Deputy Director of Education in Mumbai on October 24 about the irregularities in the first year junior college (or class 11) admissions held for 2024-25, which ended in September 2024.
In November, the office of the Deputy Director General of Education investigated their verification and directed all those colleges to cancel their admissions by the end of last month.
Sangave added that he also informed higher authorities – the director of education – about the racket.
Questions raised in online admission
FYJC admissions, which is a centralized online admission process to ensure transparency, is conducted by the Office of the Director of Education in five districts of Maharashtra.
Deputy directors are tasked with running the system for their respective districts. Pune’s parent organization System Correcting Movement (SYSCOM) has questioned the system.
Syscom president Vaishali Bafna said, “Syscom has been concerned about irregularities in FYJC admissions for some time now. It is conducted online to ensure transparency, but document verification is not done online. There are designated centers for document verification. It is a question of further investigation to know how these documents were verified. Additionally, colleges have no control over how they conduct quota (management, minority) admissions themselves.
However, Sangave said that the online admission process provides a system where students have to register their details, and they are allotted colleges based on merit.
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