New Delhi: The Delhi Police on Wednesday claimed to have busted a fake educational degree racket with the arrest of two people, including a woman.

Several forged degree certificates were seized from their possession, the police said.

The accused had allegedly cheated a Gurugram-based IT employee of over Rs 1.55 lakh on the pretext of reissuing his graduation degree, they said.

"The victim was a contractual employee in the process of being made permanent. While he had a college marksheet, his company sought a copy of his formal degree, which he did not have," a senior police officer said.

On a colleague's reference, he approached one Kapil Jhakar, 34, who claimed that he could help him procure the degree. Jhakar initially demanded around Rs 30,000 but gradually extracted Rs 1.55 lakh from the victim in multiple transactions.

He eventually sent an unsigned BA degree, which the victim's employer found invalid. After that, Jhakar stopped responding and blocked the complainant in March, he said.

"Based on the complaint, an FIR was registered and Jhakar was traced and arrested from his native village in Bhiwani in Haryana. His interrogation led police to his accomplice, 33-year-old Damini Sharma, who was nabbed from the Karkardooma area in Delhi. Police recovered hundreds of fake degrees stored digitally in Sharma's mobile phones.

"We have seized four mobile phones and seven SIM cards from both. The accused were running a racket in which they sourced or generated forged degrees from various universities," said the DCP.

The officer said they were selling these degrees to unsuspecting victims in exchange for large sums of money. Further investigation is underway to identify more victims and trace the network behind the fake document syndicate, he added.