Mumbai: The Thane crime branch arrested an education counsellor for allegedly duping a female medical aspirant’s family of Rs 20 lakh by falsely assuring to get her admitted to a state medical college. The police suspects that the accused might have duped others too by making them false promises. The counsellor allegedly refused to return the money to the aspirant’s family after failing to get her the admission.
The accused, identified as Shiva Subhramaniam (40), runs Carrier Consultant and Association in Goregaon. According to the police, in 2015 the accused had contacted some students and promised to secure them admission in a good medical college. When parents of some students approached the accused later, he asked for Rs 20 lakh to secure admission.
Kishor Kulkarni (53), told the police in his complaint that he had given Subhramaniam Rs 5 lakh in 2016. “The accused had assured to secure Kulkarni’s daughter admission in a well-known medical college of Maharashtra. Although the girl did not get admission in 2016, the accused recently asked the complainant for Rs 15 lakh more to secure admission in a Mumbai-based medical college,” police inspector Dilipkumar Rajbhoj, the investigation officer, said.
However, the girl did not get admission this time either, after which Kulkarni asked Subhramaniam to return his money. But Subhramaniam refused to pay. Following this, the complainant registered his complaint in the Badlapur police station.
Mr Rajbhoj said that the accused used to claim that he knew the trustees of some colleges. But Subhramaniam had been fooling people about the same, the inspector said. “They accepted payment by cheques, RTGS transfer and in cash, so we have some documents against the accused. We are interrogating Subhramaniam and we have received some more information of people who are involved in this scam along with him,” he said. According to the police officials, the accused spent all the money he received from the complainant on dance bars, malls and parties.
