Bengaluru: An MTech graduate who posed as a vice-chancellor and duped over 40 educational institutions by promising them affiliation and approval for medical and para-medical courses was arrested by the police on Friday, June 24.
                                            Fake vice-chancellor Santhosh Lohar was arrested on June 24

Santhosh Lohar, an M Tech graduate hailing from West Bengal is the arrested. Lohar was at large from last one month and finally arrested from his flat in Thirumala Garden on Bannerghatta Road. He had opened a fake university and used to privide ‘approvals’ for more than 100 courses.

Police during the press conference said that, the accused used fake number plate indicating that his car was a government vehicle, a red beacon and all the requisite seals, letterheads to cheat people. Lohar used to approach educational institutions assuring them of getting the Union government’s approval for running their courses. During investigation it was revealed that he not only provided approvals for existing institutions to run new courses, but even approvals for new colleges. Lohar had convinced officials of various educational institutions that he was getting approvals for them from the MCI. He had even created a fake Central Government gazette for his university and even had statutes and an Act in place for it.

“He had a whole team with him for inspection of colleges and for granting affiliations. He did everything as per procedure without arousing suspicion. The institutions were asked to send money only through DD to his account,” according to officials.

The fraud was exposed after a Chennai-based college after finalizing deal with Lohar grew suspicious when the management came across a news report about the arrest of one person (in April 2016) in a similar case in West Bengal, bearing the same university name that Lohar was using (Bio Chemic Grants Commission and University of Biochemic Health Sciences). However, Lohar had convinced the college that the news report was not true.

But when the college authorities visited Lohar’s office in J P Nagar in May, it was locked. Hence, they decided to lodge complaint and the police were on lookout for the culprit.

Seals, bank credit cards, a car (registration number KA51 MA 2800), cash of Rs 27 lakh from his bank accounts has been seized by the police.

Shivakumar, Mahesh, Babu, Chandrashekar, Rajesh and two other associates of Lohar are yet to be arrested.