They were trying to register themselves with the city courts. The curtains came down on the racket after a three-year probe. But a senior police officer called it a “tip of the iceberg”.

Of the six, five were produced at the Bankshal court today and were remanded in police custody for eight days.

The other will be produced in the court tomorrow.

The five were Ashok Kumar Burman (53) of Gholabazaar of North 24 Parganas; Dilip Kumar Acharjee (36) of Bangur Avenue; Ananda Kumar Das (27) of Kachrapara; Partho Das (25) of Uluberia and Somnath Sarkar (28) of Naihati. All were arrested from their homes early this morning. Masud Karim (36) of South Dinajpore was arrested this afternoon from Sonarpur.

The investigations had begun on September 24, 2004, after the Hare Street police station received a complaint against nine fake lawyers.

The complaint was filed by Pinaki Ranjan Banerjee, assistant secretary, West Bengal Bar Council. ‘

He was suspicious about the LLB certificates they had produced while applying for enlistment as registered lawyers.

They received their certificates from either Ranchi or Bhagalpur universities, but on investigating it was found that they had not studied there.

The police had handed over the case to the DD, which was probing similar cases.

Jawed Shamim, Deputy Commissioner, Detective Department, said: “Most of the certificates were purportedly from the Ranchi University and two from the Bhagalpur University. We sent our teams to both universities and found the certificates were forged.”

Since then, the DD had kept a vigil on them. Yesterday, the department had sent nine teams throughout the state to arrest them.