CNN-IBN - Prabhakar Kumar
Patna, Jun 2: For a change, Bihar's controversial and notorious politician, Rashtriya Janata Dal MLA Mohammad Shahabuddin is in news for academic reasons.
Shahabuddin has recently acquired a degree in law from the BBA Bihar University. That shouldn’t sound controversial.
However, the catch is that Shahabuddin never took the qualifying exam.
Instead, he acquired the degree by making a person called Mohammed Firoz take for the test in his name.
Incidentally, but for Shahabuddin, the business of fake degrees is hardly a news in Bihar:
It’s easy to acquire a personalised, customised degree if you have the contacts in the right places. You just need to know the right tout.
"I have graduation degrees, post-graduation certificates and also for MBBS and engineering degrees. You’ll get whatever you want,” an anonymous fake degree seller says.
To get a degree in the course of your choice, you just need to shell out as little as Rs 500. The soft copies of the degrees are also available in CDs sold right outside the University campus.
All one has to do is to download the form on a computer, fill in as many marks as desired, take a printout of the mark-sheet and deposit it back in the college.
"If you want to write the exam sitting at home, or want to pass the exam sitting in the comforts of your bedroom, it’s possible. If you want an easier way out, there are CDs. Just print it and get your very own graduation degree,” the degree seller says.
Most of these degrees stand valid unless thoroughly probed by some competent agency.
Unbelievable as it sounds, this practice has been going on in certain pockets of Bihar for years.
Surprisingly, the state government officials are waiting for someone to lodge a formal complaint with them to crack down on the racketeers who are making open mockery of education system in Bihar.
"I have no information about this. I don’t want to comment on it unless I get a formal complaint. I just cannot presume things,” District Magistrate Muzaffarpur Vinay Kumar says.
L L B Mohammad Sahabuddin is a high-profile offender, but there are thousand others like him with fake degrees who have gotten away with it.