New Delhi: Sleuths probing the Delhi University (DU) admission scam busted two days ago have their sights set on Inderjeet Singh alias ‘Kaku’ identified as the likely mastermind of the Rs.1 billion racket.

A Delhi Police official privy to the investigation told IANS that Kaku’s trail was being hotly pursued and he was the next target of the Crime Branch.

According to the official, the 35-year-old Malviya Nagar resident in south Delhi has links with some big political leaders. He, however, declined to name any leader.

The official said Kaku reportedly had used his political links in the then ruling party to run his fake admission racket unhindered for the past over three years.

“We don’t have certainty about the involvement of any party leaders in the DU admission racket, but Kaku’s links with politicians strongly indicate this possibility,” the official told IANS on condition of anonymity.

Other officials involved in the probe said the four people arrested in the case on Wednesday — Sunil Panwar alias Guruji, 41, Mohd. Zuber, 25, Parveen Kumar Jha, 35 and Ranchit Khurana alias Bunty, 30 — had given several inputs about Kaku, whose role was to manage the final admission process.

“Panwar and Zuber used to procure the candidates and then get in touch with Khurana who, in turn, used to obtain forged documents from Jha. Kaku used to keep track of each process and used his links with DU staff to push the admissions through,” another official said.

The official said that Panwar, Zuber and Khurana had reportedly fixed a meeting with Kaku in Malviya Nagar but were arrested only a few hours earlier.

“Kaku managed to give us the slip that time, but we expect we’ll arrest him very soon,” the official said.

So far, 22 fake admissions have been detected in Hindu College, Kirori Mal College, Aurobindo College (evening), Kamala Nehru College, Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, Dyal Singh College (evening and morning), PGDAV and Ram Lal Anand colleges.

The modus operandi included preparation of forged documents like marks-sheets as also migration, degree, character and caste certificates.

Police said the accused also supplied fake degrees of various universities to candidates seeking jobs in the private sector.

“The racketeers used to charge Rs.3-7 lakh from prospective students for securing them admission in a college and a course of their choice,” said the official.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Ravindra Yadav had said on Thursday that the accused also used to prepare documents of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar boards of education.

Police also said that they had sent separate notices to all the colleges of Delhi University to assist them in the probe.