Lucknow: Continuing with its probe into the alleged Rs 500 crore scholarship scam, Enforcement Directorate on Thursday arrested Vikram Nag, a differently abled international cricketer, from Lakhimpur Kheri. This is the fourth arrest in the scam. On April 26, ED had arrested three persons identified as Izhar Hussain Jafri, Ali Abbas Jafri and Ravi Prakash Gupta.
The accused was produced in a court which remanded him to seven-day custody of the ED.
The ED sources said that Vikram in connivance with the three arrested earlier was operating the scam from Hygia Group of colleges and fraudulently obtained scholarship funds using Aadhaar and bank details of ineligible persons shown as students.
They said that Vikarm used to arrange handicapped students for availing scholarship under the government’s quota for the physically handicapped.
The ED had registered a case and first began raids on 10 educational institutes of the Hygia group across several districts of UP on February 16. It had also seized crucial evidence of the offence not only of these 10 institutes but also related to several other colleges and institutes which, prima facie, were also found engaged in the scam.
The probe has also revealed that Vikram not only controlled the bank accounts of beneficiary students but illegally kept their ATM cards, phone numbers for self-operation but also illegally used the user IDs and passwords and their micro ATM machines for transfer and withdrawal of the scholarship funds from the bank accounts of the students at various locations, said sources in ED. According to sources, the scholarship amount meant for over 500 students was siphoned by the accused.
