Himachal Pradesh: Additional charge sheets in the scholarship scandal are filed by the ED
Himachal Pradesh: In connection with the multi-crore Himachal Pradesh Scholarship Scam, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Shimla, has intensified its action against private educational institutions accused of embezzling government funds intended for underprivileged students by filing two additional supplementary prosecution complaints (SPCs) before the Special Court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The third supplemental prosecution charge was filed on August 22, 2025, against ICL Hitech Educational Society, Sanjiv Kumar Prabhakar, and other co-accused, the agency said in a news statement on Saturday.
It was discovered that the organization, which runs the ICL Group of Colleges in Haryana, has engaged in money laundering.
On December 17, 2025, the fourth supplemental prosecution complaint was filed against Bhupinder Kumar Sharma, Dev Bhumy Educational Trust, and additional co-accused.
In the Himachal Pradesh district of Una, the trust was in charge of the Dev Bhumy Group of Institutes.
An FIR filed by the Central Bureau of probe (CBI), Shimla, which had discovered significant anomalies in the Directorate of Higher Education’s (DoHE) scholarship distribution, served as the basis for the ED’s probe.
The Post Matric Scholarship Scheme (PMSS), which was intended for Himachal Pradesh’s SC, ST, and OBC students, is where the alleged scam took place.
According to investigations, a number of private institutions uploaded the information of students who were either enrolled or had dropped out of their studies in order to illegally claim scholarship money.
Institutions reportedly improperly declared day scholars as hostellers, changed students’ courses, and changed caste groups in later years in order to boost scholarship claims on the HP-e Pass site.
The ED also discovered that the money obtained from the scheme was utilized to purchase both real estate and real estate in the names of the defendants and their relatives.
Previously, incriminating papers were found during searches conducted under the PMLA, around Rs 80 lakh in cash was recovered, and bank balances and fixed deposits totaling about Rs 3.30 crore were frozen.
Six people have been detained in connection with the investigation, and provisional attachment orders have been filed for assets valued at around Rs 30.5 crore so far.
The scholarship fraud is still being investigated, according to the ED.