Officials of the district administration and police in Jabalpur said today that they have arrested 21 people including private school owners, book publishers and printers in connection with a fee scam worth nearly Rs 240 crore that was allegedly carried out by about a dozen private schools since 2017.

As per officials, the police have registered FIRs against 11 private schools and 51 people in the case. The administration has also slapped a total fine of Rs 22 lakh on the accused school owners.

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According to Jabalpur Collector Deepak Saxena, the inquiry in the matter revealed that private schools had been hiking their fees without following any orders or regulations of the Madhya Pradesh Private Schools Fees Regulation Act. The official said that the school owners were also forcing the parents to buy books from some particular shops only.

Jabalpur SP Aditya Pratap Singh said that FIRs have been registered at 11 different police stations of Jabalpur district. He said the FIRs have been registered under Sections 409, 420, 467, 468 and 120-B against 11 schools.

The SP said police have named 51 accused in the scam including 30 persons related to the schools’ management, five book distributors and 16 book publishers.

The Collector pointed out that the district administration has so far made the accused school owners return an amount of about Rs 81 crore to many of the parents from whom they had taken excess fees. The official said they have ordered the school owners to return the remaining excess amount too within a month or else the administration would seize and auction the school properties to recover the amount.

The Collector said such schools are suspected to have carried out this irregularity since 2017 and took excess fees from parents of nearly seven lakh students. He said the district administration has slapped a fine of Rs two lakh each on the 11 private schools.