ahmedabad six years ago a major teachers recruitment scam was unearthed in gujarat it involved private and grantinaid schools doling out jobs for teachers in various secondary and higher secondary schools on the basis of fake marksheetsa detailed probe was carried out where marksheets of 6500 teachers in secondary and higher secondary schools in the state which were from universities outside of the state were scrutinized one of the leads went to bundelkhand university in jhansidepartment sources say that the first phase of the inquiry which was 20 per cent showed that more than 1100 teachers had fake degrees the report was explosive sensing trouble the government swiftly shelved the report and did not act upon it in gujarat there are more than 75000 teachers employed in secondary and higher secondary schoolssince 2003 the gujarat secondary and higher secondary education board gshseb had rounded off close to 213 teachers who were found with fake degrees the department identified various universities having dubious credentials and then two years later instituted a fullfledged investigation district education officers deo in different districts were asked to make trips to specific states and universities with a list of doubtful cases and degrees and conduct a verification process the cid was asked to nab the culprits involved in the degree tradethe education department noticed that there were 75000 teachers in the entire state out of which 350 teachers were rounded off in the first month itself some of these teachers were serving in schools for more than seven years the department recovered rs 35 crore from these teachers as they belonged to grantinaid schoolsone of the universities from where these fake degrees were sourced was bundelkhand university in jhansi where an agent was identified who sent fake verification letters on the university letterhead for teachers who had bought fake bed and degree mark sheets from him a gshseb official told toi on conditions of anonymity the agent had nexus with the university staff and sat outside the premises he promptly collected confidential letters from gujarat whenever teachers informed him of queries sent by the education department the query letters never went to the university channels the cid crime had made arrests then today we estimate that 1100 teachers are there who have fake marksheets and are employed in various schoolsthe official adds the report is still lying with the government and has not been acted upon there are more teachers whose degrees are yet to be scrutinized and we suspect that there are many teachers involved in the scam than the estimated number