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Zeal Education Society Charged More Fees by Showing High Expenditure with Bogus Staff; Founder Director Katkar among 3 Arrested

*The accused had shown bogus staff and committed financial misappropriation of Rs 4.25 crore.

Pune: The economic offences wing (EOW) of the Pune City Police Crime Branch has arrested Zeal Education Society’s Founder Director SM Katkar and two others for allegedly cheating the government and parents of students by charging high fees.

The accused had shown bogus staff and committed financial misappropriation of Rs 4.25 crore. According to police, the accused had committed fraud in engineering college, MBA/MCA and other institutions for the last several years.

The arrested accused have been identified as ZES Founder President Sambhaji Maruti Katkar (65), a resident of Hingne Khurd, Sinhagad Road, former principal Chandrakant Narayan Kulkarni (58) of Duttnagar, Katraj and auditor Yuvraj Vitthal Bhandari (35), a resident of Ambegaon Khurd. Yogesh Subhash Dhage had lodged a complaint after conducting a parallel investigation into the fraud

Police said that the accused conspired to send a proposal to the government for the approval of the fees of Zeal Polytechnic College, showing bogus staff (alumni and relatives of the staff) as working while they were not on the job. Pretending to have paid their salaries, they prepared false salary sheets and submitted them to the Fee Assessment Committee, Mumbai for approval. The tuition fee committee approved the fee on the basis of expenditure shown by the institute. Accordingly, the accused charged high fees from the students, thus cheating their parents and the government.

The arrested accused was produced before the court which remanded them in judicial custody. Police Inspector Dattatray Bhapkar is conducting further investigation.

The investigation is being carried out under the guidance of Commissioner of Police Amitabh Gupta, Jt CP Ravindra Shisve, Additional CP (Crime) Ramnath Pokle, DCP (EOW) Bhagyashri Navtake and ACP Vijay Palsule.

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