The Bengaluru police have arrested a 45-year-old man who allegedly ran a fake education consultancy to dupe 18 medical seat aspirants. The accused, Sharath Goud, hails from Telangana’s Hyderabad and holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree. Bengaluru city police commissioner B Dayananda said they recovered Rs 47.80 lakh from him. Goud, who has been visiting Bengaluru for 12 years, set up an education consultancy named 'Nexus Edu' on the new BEL road in January this year, said the police. He allegedly paid money to an agent to get the details of students who attended the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET). After getting their details, Goud hired four women as telecallers and approached medical seat aspirants, stating their institution would get medical seats in reputed colleges across the country and asked them to pay a huge sum in return, said the police. In one such case, the firm approached a medical seat aspirant to get him a medical seat in Kerala’s P K DAS Institute of Medical Sciences and asked to pay Rs 12 lakh as finder's fee. Stating that a seat which would be dropped out by students would be assigned to him for a lower money, the victim paid Rs 4 lakh. When the student approached the college in Kerala, he found out that he was scammed and he came down to Bengaluru to meet Goud in the Nexus Edu office which was shut. He filed a complaint with the Sanjay Nagar police, who registered a case. Goud, who had rented a luxurious apartment in Hyderabad , was arrested. He was living with his wife and child, said the police. "We checked his bank account and the money was withdrawn but he had stored it inside a cupboard in his residence. His bank account only had 46 paisa and the probe revealed that his wife was unaware of Goud's cheating but she knew that he was into real-estate business and used to operate it from Bengaluru. The Sanjay Nagar police filed a case under sections 120B (punishment of criminal conspiracy), 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
