KOCHI: A former student of the Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) has landed in legal trouble after it was found that he secured a government job in Arunachal Pradesh’s Public Works Department (PWD) by submitting forged educational documents.
The accused, who is from Thrissur, allegedly submitted a fake BTech mechanical engineering certificate despite actually graduating in BTech information technology from Cusat in 2006 with good marks. He reportedly used a certificate belonging to a friend and altered the name and registration number to match his own. The fraudulent act went undetected during the initial verification by the Arunachal Pradesh PWD.
“He was appointed to the department in 2018 and continued in the post for over five years,” a police officer said.
“However, trouble began when the department initiated a qualification verification drive three months ago for all its employees, a first-time effort to ensure authenticity of credentials. As part of the process, the submitted documents were sent to Cusat for verification.”
On close scrutiny, Cusat officials discovered that the accused had never studied mechanical engineering and had instead completed a degree in information technology. The university promptly informed the department and also filed a formal police complaint.
Based on this, the Kalamassery police registered an FIR against the person and launched a probe. He is expected to be summoned for questioning soon. Police are now investigating how the forged certificate was created and whether he had assistance from any certificate forgery rackets for the act.
The police said they would contact their counterparts in Arunachal Pradesh to verify whether any investigation was conducted into the incident there. Also, if the forged document was created in Arunachal Pradesh, they will seek the assistance of the police there as part of the probe, said an officer.