Mohali University Staff Accused of Fee Fraud
- Chandigarh University in Mohali says two admission staffers steered international students’ tuition into personal bank accounts, triggering a police fraud case. - The alleged scam hit at least 39 foreign students for ₹23.7 lakh after a Nepalese student’s February complaint exposed forged receipts. - It matters because overseas students depend on staff guidance — and one bad payment channel can leave both fees and enrollment in limbo.
A university fee payment is supposed to be the boring part. You pay, the school records it, and your enrollment moves on. But in Mohali, that routine step appears to have turned into the whole scam. Police have booked two Chandigarh University employees after allegations that they told foreign students to send tuition money to personal accounts instead of official university channels, then covered the gap with fake receipts. (hindustantimes.com) ### Who is accused here? The two men named in local coverage are Danish Mahajan, 25, from Gurdaspur, and Akshay Wesley, 36, from Pathankot. Both were working in admission-related roles at Chandigarh University, and investigators say they used that position to guide international students away from the university’s real payment system. (tribuneindia.com) ### What did they allegedly do? Basically, the allegation is simple: tell students to transfer fees into private bank accounts, not university accounts. That alone might have raised alarms, but the scheme seems to have held together because students were then given receipts meant to make the payments look legit(tribuneindia.com). (hindustantimes.com) ### How big was the alleged fraud? The number attached to the case is about ₹23.7 lakh — often rounded in headlines to ₹24 lakh. The student count is at least 39 international students. That matters because this does not look like one mistaken transfer or one disputed payment. It looks, if the allegations hold up, like a repeated method used across a sizable group of students. (msn.com) ### How did the case come out? Turns out the first visible crack came from one student. A Nepalese student complained on February 3 that roughly ₹2.10 lakh had been paid, but the university system still showed the fee as unpaid. Once that complaint was checked, more students came forward with similar stories within days, and the pattern became hard to dismiss as a clerical problem. (jagran.com) ### Why were foreign students especially exposed? International students often rely heavily on admission staff, consultants, and WhatsApp-style payment instructions while dealing with visas, deadlines, currency transfers, and unfamiliar systems. That makes trust part of the transaction. If the person guiding you sits inside the university process — or appears to — the usual fraud warning signs get blurred. That is the ugly part of this story. (hindustantimes.com) ### Is this a police case now? Yes. Kharar police registered a case after the university complaint and preliminary checking. The reported sections relate to cheating and criminal breach of trust. Local reports also say the two accused were arrested, though the legal process is still at the allegation stage and the case will turn on bank records, receipts, and internal communication trails. (tribuneindia.com) ### What should students take from it? The practical lesson is brutally specific: never pay tuition through a staff member’s personal account, even if the instruction looks routine. Match every payment request against the university portal, official finance office, and written bank details from institutional domains. In cases like this, the difference between “pending” and “paid” can be the difference between a normal semester and a police file. (hindustantimes.com) ### Bottom line This is not just a fraud story. It is a trust-chain failure. When admission staff sit between vulnerable students and official payment systems, a fake receipt can buy enough time for real money to disappear. (hindustantimes.com)
