By Shubhangi Chauhan
Pune’s MIT World Peace University (MIT-WPU) has succumbed to a ₹2.46 crore cyber fraud where scammers impersonated high-ranking academics and tempted the university with the offer of the government-approved research funding. Pune Cyber Police has filed an FIR and started an investigation.
Officials noted that from July 25 to August 7, the Chief Academic Officer (CAO) of the university, Dr. Prasad Khandekar, received WhatsApp messages supposedly sent by the former Savitribai Phule Pune University vice-chancellor, Dr. Raghunath Shevgaonkar. Then he met a man who was pretending to be Dr. Chethan Kamath, a professor at IIT Bombay. The scammer persuaded the university that the Department of Science and Technology and DRDO had given clearances to over ₹200 crore in drones, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, but demanded an initial payment of 2% as an eligibility deposit.
Relying on the assertions, the university released ₹56 lakh on July 25 and ₹46 lakh on July 30 and ₹1.44 crore on August 7. The money was diverted to a state sector bank account at Hyderabad. An agreement meeting with signing on August 28 did not actually happen and when no reply was received from “Kamath” the university verified with IIT Bombay and found that there was no professor or project with that name.
The authorities of MIT-WPU said that their internal systems sounded alarms over the fraud and halted any further transfers immediately and reported the matter to cybercrime. It was registered as FIR, in sections 318(4), 319(2) of the Bharatiya Nyay Samhita and section 66D of the Information Technology Act.
According to police, the scam belongs to a bigger racket of attacking educational institutions on the basis of the desire to get high-value research funding. Fraudsters are following the money trail and fake bank accounts to determine the culprits.