It’s now been established that outstation students, accounting for 40 per cent of the total seats in professional courses, fall prey to these scams when they come to the city seeking admission despite having scored poorly in their qualifying exams and hope to set things right by seeking to ‘buy’ the seats. Only too happy to oblige, the scores of agents on the prowl outside most reputed institutes, take over. And another ‘duping’ incident is reported the next day. Often many cases go unreported as the parents prefer to cut their losses and leave the city.

Additional Commissioner of Police (crime) Rajender Singh said the city police have appealed the colleges and students to inform the crime branch about when they come across touts trying to sell seats. “The issue of bogus institutes is tackled by the government bodies like All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE). About the admission rackets, the police are watchful,” he said.

“It seems that police actions have made no impact. The agents are back in our college premises this year too. They are holding closed door meetings and offering admissions to various courses starting with class 11,” a senior employee at a prominent college said.

“Not all agents can be charged of duping their clients. Some of them, with links to the students wing of political parties, often secure admissions for aspiring students,” he added.

However, the students’ leaders beg to differ. “By blaming students’ organisations, college authorities try to boost their own admission rackets,” said Pradeep Deshmukh, president, city unit of NCP students’ wing. “The agents involved in the admission racket are mostly the past students of the same college,” he said.

“There are unauthorised agents, who keep on cheating parents and students,” said Rahul Karad, executive director, Maharashtra Institute of Technology. “We have been appealing the parents and students to directly approach us instead of going to the agents. Terms like management quota and donations have created confusion among the students and parents. The parents think that they can get admissions by paying money, which is a wrong notion,” Karad said.

According to police, what comes out from the agents who have been nabbed is that they charge anywhere between Rs 3 lakh to Rs 16 lakh from the victims against promises to provide admission for MBA, medical, engineering, biotechnology and other courses in leading city based colleges. Action was also initiated against some bogus institutes for running various courses illegally.

The Pune rural police had arrested five trustees of alleged bogus “Siddharth Institute of Medical College’ at Talegaon Dabhade in June 2007. Students who secured 50 per cent marks in their HSC exams were given admission after paying Rs 3.5 lakh.

Pune police had issued orders to all police stations in June 2007 to check the criminal background of politicians involved in the admission rackets. But the racketeers are still active.