Madurai district unit of Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) registered a case of misappropriation of funds and irregularities in Directorate of Distance Education of Madurai Kamaraj University.
The first information report, registered on September 15, has booked eight persons, including four former/serving employees of the varsity and four private persons for criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery, falsification of accounts and under the provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act.
Following a tip-off on irregularities in the DDE, an inquiry was conducted by DVAC that revealed that the registration fee and tuition fee of 34 students from other States pursuing commerce were not credited into the account of the university.
However, 17 of them had received course completion certificate and 12 had received consolidated mark statement and provisional certificate. The remaining five students had not received the mark statement and provisional certificate.
While perusing the details of registration and tuition fees of 16,580 students, the DVAC officials found that the serial number of one demand draft was used multiple times against several students.
Among them 858 DDs were invalid. Similarly, the registration fees of seven students were not credited into the account of the DDE. This made their admission invalid and they became ineligible to appear for the examinations.
The details of fees entered by authorised coordinators of the MKU were not properly verified by the former Superintendent, Electronic Data Procession Admission Section, R. Sathyamoorthi.
The inquiry also revealed that out of the four students of Kerala, two of them had got fail marks. The records revealed two others had absented themselves during the examination.
However, one of them had received consolidated mark statement in the routine process in 2017 and 2018 and the other three had got it through grievance petition which was issued by the then Additional Controller of Examination Rajarajan.
The FIR said that fake marks were entered in consolidated mark statement giving them pass mark while they had either failed or had not appeared for the exam.
The DVAC said that Rajarajan, who is dead since, had colluded with computer programmer J. Karthigaiselvan and former superintendent UG Exam Course Section, Rajapandi and others and issued course completion certificates to 342 students who had not paid the registration fee and tuition fees and caused a revenue loss of ₹ 1.39 lakh to the university.
