Kasaragod police charge Vidya with forgery for using fake certificate at Karinthalam govt college

 K Vidya
K Vidya. Photo: Screengrab/ manorama news

Kasaragod: Nileshwar police have pressed charges of forgery and forgery for the purpose of cheating against SFI leader K Vidya for allegedly using two forged experience certificates to get an ad hoc teaching job in a government college in Kasaragod district.

Nileshwar Station House Officer, Inspector Premsadan K, said the case was registered on a complaint filed by Jaison V Joseph, principal-in-charge of Government Arts and Science College at Karinthalam in Kinanur-Kainthalam grama panchayat.

The Nileshwar police visited the Karinthalam college on Friday as part of the investigation.

On Wednesday, Kochi police also filed a similar case against Vidya, a native of Kasaragod, after she used a forged experience certificate to apply for a guest lecturer job at Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Government College at Palakkad's Attappadi.

She submitted two experience certificates to the Attappadi college saying she had taught Malayalam at Kochi's Maharaja’s College as a guest lecturer in 2018-2019 and 2020-2021.

But when the Attappadi college sent the certificates for verification to Maharaja’s College, principal Joy V S wrote back saying the certificate and his signature on them were forged.

Later, Joy filed a police complaint against Vidya. She is an alumnus of Maharaja's College. She was elected as the PG representative on an SFI ticket in 2017-2018. She joined a PhD programme at Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit at Kalady in December 2019. In the university, she was elected as the general secretary of the students' union on an SFI ticket.

After the media reported Vidya's forgery attempt at Attappadi college, it was found that Vidya had used the same forged experience certificates to get the job of a guest lecturer at the Government college in Karinthalam in Kasaragod district. She taught there from June 2022 to March 2023.

The college's principal-in-charge Joseph wrote to Maharaja’s College to verify her certificate and got the same reply that they were forged. In fact, Maharaja's College had not hired a guest lecturer since 2013.

Based on Joseph's complaint, Nileshwar police charged her with Section 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), Section 471 (using forged document as genuine and so she shall be punished as if she had forged it) and Section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code.

"Section 468 is a non-bailable offence and if convicted, she may face imprisonment up to seven years," said Inspector Premsadan.

To be sure, Vidya taught as a guest lecturer at Government Arts and Science College at Pathirippalla in Palakkad from October 2021 to May 2022 without claiming to have teaching experience.

Apart from the complaint of the Kainthalam college principal-in-charge, the Congress committee of Kinanur-Kainthalam mandalam committee had also filed a complaint against her with Kanhangad Deputy Superintendent of Police P Balakrishnan Nair seeking action against the leader of Students Federation of India (SFI), the students' wing of the CPM.

The Congress' Kerala Students Union (KSU) Kasaragod district president Jawad Puthur met principal in-charge Joseph and asked him to clarify if the college consciously chose to neglect the certificate produced by Vidya, or if it failed to verify the experience certificate in time.

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