Eight persons were arrested on Tuesday for allegedly extorting money from owners of coaching institutes by impersonating University Grants Commission (UGC) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials, the police said on Wednesday.
Fake identity cards to help the gang members pass off as UGC officials and fake letterheads of various universities have also been seized from the accused, they added.
The police control room received a call regarding a scuffle at a coaching institute on Tuesday afternoon. A police team reached the spot and found a ‘joint UGC and CBI team’, which comprised women, arguing with the institute owner and threatening him with a raid for not following UGC norms.
Sensing something was amiss, the police took the accused to the station for further investigation and identity verification.
“A police officer was sent to the UGC for identity verification of the detained persons. The UGC failed to identify them and said it had not formed such a squad. The identity cards produced by the accused to pass themselves off as UGC and CBI officials were found fake during investigation,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (North-West) Aslam Khan, adding that the accused were arrested soon after the UGC confirmed that they were imposters.
Similar ‘raids’
The mastermind were identified as Ajay Goel, owner of an events management company, and his wife Seema (name changed). The others were identified as Rina (name changed), a resident of Ghaziabad and graduate from Delhi University; Kuldeep Singh, a resident of Tilak Nagar who made short films on YouTube; Dean, a resident of Shahdara and a graduate; Reema (name changed), a resident of Noida who is an intern in a pharmaceutical company; Saksham, a resident of Jasola and graduate in civil engineering; and Abhishek, a resident of Noida who is pursuing graduation in architecture.
The accused confessed to carrying out similar ‘raids’ on previous occasions. Mr. Goel hatched the plot after reading a new item about institutes awarding fake degrees. He decided to target such institutes and extort money from them. He retrieved the list of institutes from Justdial and decided to target them randomly.
Mr. Goel allegedly wanted to earn more money to lead a lavish life and roped his wife in as well. Mr. Goel was in touch with Rina, who supplied manpower to him for events hosted by his company.
“To hire more people for his gang, Mr. Goel and Ms. Rina used media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp. They pretended to be part of a pan-India project by the UGC to carry out inspections at various educational institutes on its behalf. Five persons, including one woman, joined their team,” added Ms. Khan.
The accused, who started conducting raids since the first week of March, claimed to have extorted money from 10 raids across the city. The amount was divided after the raid. The police is in the process of gathering more details regarding these raids, added a police officer.
“We have seized a sedan and eight mobile phones, among other valuables,” said Ms. Khan.
