The Jabalpur district administration has lodged an FIR against the management personnel of 11 schools and owners of some textbooks shops accused of cheating students.
The schools charged illegally Rs. 81.30 crore from the students in form of fees, the administration has imposed fine of Rs. 22 lakh on these 11 schools.
The schools allegedly put burden of Rs. 40 crore on parents by increasing the number of books that resulted in increase of weight of the bag carried by students on their shoulders.
21 persons arrested including the school management personnel and owners of the textbook shops in the cases registered in nine police station of Jabalpur district.
Some school hiked the fees above 10 percent without seeking permission from the district administration or enhanced the fees 15 percent without approval of a committee set up by the state government, the district administration took this as one of the grounds to take action, District Collector Deepak Saxena told the press conference in Jabalpur.
Many of the schools did not uploaded the audit report on the school website and there are schools have multiple branches and certain amount of fees collected from one branch was transferred to another branch and the entire monetary transaction of the expenditure and earning is not clear, the official said.
These schools forced the parents to purchase fake ISBN textbooks, he said.
There are documentary evidence of criminal conspiracy between the schools management and the owners of stationary shops, the administration in the investigation found.
On investigation the cost of printing and price there is margin of 70 to 100 percent in many books and the margin was not passed to the students who purchase the books.
The district administration registered separate cases under section 420, 409, 468, 471, 120 B of Indian Penal Code (IPC) in nine police stations of Jabalpur district and arrested 21 accused persons.
