The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached properties and assets worth Rs 194 crore of a Solan-based private university, Manav Bharti University, for alleged sale of fake degrees, according to Himachal Pradesh Director General of Police (DGP) Sanjay Kundu.

Talking to media persons in Shimla today, Kundu said the HP Police had unearthed the “biggest and one of its kind scam” in the country in which over 36,000 fake degrees were sold to students from across 17 states of the country.

“Further investigations in the matter are on and we are in the process of extraditing the family of chairman of the private university, Raj Kumar Rana, namely his wife Ashwani Kanwar, son Mandeep Rana and daughter Aaina Rana from Australia,” the DGP said.

Kundu said Rana earlier used to run a small pharmacy institute in Karnal in Haryana and later founded Manav Bharti Trust on the basis of which he was given a Letter of Intent (LoI) for opening a private university in Solan district in 2009.

Rana opened the university at Dharampur in Solan district and later founded Madhav University in Udaipur in Rajasthan.

The DGP said that the police had confiscated 55 hard disks belonging to the university and on their analysis the record of 41,000 degrees issued by the university was found, out of which 36,000 degrees were found to be fake.

“We have unearthed record of properties worth Rs 440 crore that are owned by Rana, his family members and associates and out of this, properties and assets worth Rs 194 crore are found to be proceeds of crime. We intimated ED about the money laundering after which the assets were attached by the agency,” Kundu said.

He added that 275 persons were questioned in this fake degrees scam case and 8 persons were arrested out of which 6 were on bail while 2 accused were in judicial custody.

Significantly, the investigations into this fake degrees scam were launched after the University Grants Commission (UGC) wrote a letter to the HP government in February 2020 about “sale of fake degrees” by Manav Bharti University and the Shimlabased APG University.

Manav Bharti University had allegedly sold around 4.5 lakh fake degrees in the last 7 years while APG University had allegedly sold 15,000 degrees with the help of agents located in 17 states of the country.

These two private universities had allegedly sold degrees including that of technical education courses under which there were only limited seats allocated to these educational institutes, the UGC had stated in its letter.