Rs 1.35 crore minority scholarship fraud with fake documents unveiled in Bengaluru

A case has been filed in relation to a Rs 1.35 crore scam in the minority student scholarship scheme run by the Ministry of Minority Affairs. The FIR was lodged at the Central Division's Cyber Crime (CEN) Police Station in Bengaluru.

The case was filed by Pradeep Simha, District Officer, Department of Minority Welfare. The FIR said the scam was the submission of false documents of 643 students to cheat scholarships through the National Scholarship Portal (NSP).

Fraud involves pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means scholarships paid between 2021 and 2023. Total misappropriation is Rs 1,35,73,212.

The FIR lists private school and college principals, nodal officers and students as accused. The anomalies were detected during verification of records, wherein it was found that fake entries and papers were uploaded to illegally lock in scholarship money.

Police have recorded the case and initiated an investigation.

This scam has been uncovered nearly two years after India Today broke the largest minority scholarship scandal in India. The August 2023 report revealed that nearly 53 per cent of institutions that operated under the minority scholarship scheme were found to be bogus. An internal probe by the Ministry of Minority Affairs found large-scale corruption in 830 such institutions resulting in a Rs 144.83 crore five-year scam.

In a scam in Karnataka, 10 people, one of them a Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) employee, were nabbed in December 2024, for seat-blocking against money during the 2024-2025 admissions to undergraduate engineering courses. The scam was perpetrated by filling options through candidates who did not have any intention of joining college, thus blocking government quota seats at institutions such as BMS Engineering College, Akash Institute of Engineering and Technology, and New Horizon College of Engineering. This scheme favored private colleges and disenfranchised deserving students.