West Bengal: Medical admission racket kingpin arrested

Jayanta Das (52) and his associate Pintu Dey (42) were arrested from Dum Dum's Mall Road on the basis of a complaint filed last December by Ashish Kumar Laha for cheating him of Rs 12 lakh promising to admit his son to a medical college, a senior officer of the Kolkata Police said.

They were running a coaching centre named Vivekanand Institute at Santoshpur in south Kolkata and had given advertisements in newspapers promising admission to both government-run and private medical colleges, he said.

The Kolkata Police had earlier arrested three others - husband-wife duo Chaitali Duta, Ritwick Dutta and Ujjal Saha - who were part of the gang and recovered Rs 60 lakh from them, the IPS said.

"They used to show forged certificates to those who used to come to their institution for admission to gain their confidence," he said.

There were several complaints against these people when they found that the office of the Institution vanished one fine morning last August, the officer said.