A joint team of the Kanpur Police’s Pheelkhana station and the Special Operations Group (SOG) in Uttar Pradesh has busted a racket involved in manufacturing and selling fake educational certificates with links across 25 states, arresting two members and recovering forged marksheets, degrees and other documents from multiple universities.The arrested accused admitted that they had been involved in the trade for the past several years. (For Representation)The arrested accused have been identified as Amit Saxena and Gopal Gupta. Police said the alleged kingpin Akhilesh Shukla and his brother Nikhilesh Shukla are absconding. Akhilesh was released from jail in March this year after being arrested by the Gomti Nagar police in Lucknow in December 2025 in another fake marksheet case.Addressing a press conference, police commissioner Raghubir Lal said the accused were part of a fresh network engaged in manufacturing and selling forged educational documents. “We have arrested two persons and recovered 59 forged marksheets, certificates and degrees. The investigation has revealed a network spread across several states,” he said.Four Android mobile phones and ₹4.53 lakh in cash were also recovered from the arrested accused. Police said the racket had developed a nationwide network of around 500 agents or clients who allegedly facilitated the sale of fake certificates and transferred money through UPI to the accused’s bank accounts.Preliminary financial scrutiny has revealed transactions of nearly ₹60 crore through accounts linked to the accused, including around ₹50 crore routed through five accounts allegedly operated by Akhilesh Shukla and another ₹7 crore through Gopal Gupta’s account.During interrogation, the arrested accused admitted that they had been involved in the trade for the past seven to ten years. Commissioner Lal said the probe, which began in February, has already led to the recovery of thousands of forged certificates, with verification of many more documents still underway.Police said Amit Saxena, a native of Etawah who was living in Kanpur, also holds a passport issued in Bengaluru and has travelled abroad on multiple occasions. Investigators are examining whether those visits had any connection with the racket. Further investigation is in progress to trace the absconding accused and identify beneficiaries of the forged certificates.