📰 From the news · Fake admission / seat promise
A forged disability certificate and an EWS certificate for a 2023 MBBS seat at SKIMS Soura: two Bandipora residents booked by J&K's Economic Offences Wing
Reserved seats are among the most fiercely contested parts of India's medical admissions. Under NEET counselling, a candidate certified as a person with benchmark disability (PwD) or as belonging to the economically weaker section (EWS) competes in a smaller pool with lower closing ranks. That creates a market for certificates. In Jammu and Kashmir, the Economic Offences Wing of the Crime Branch, rather than the medical college, has taken up the latest such case.
According to Kashmir Life and a PTI report carried by ThePrint on 3 February 2026, the EOW Kashmir registered a case against two residents of Bandipora district over admission to the MBBS course of 2023 at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), Soura, Srinagar. A spokesperson said the beneficiary, from Ajas in Bandipora, had obtained the seat by submitting a forged PwD certificate and an EWS certificate although the candidate was neither physically nor mentally disabled. A second person, from Asham in Sumbal, is accused of procuring the fake PwD certificate "in connivance" with the beneficiary.
The case began, the spokesperson said, with information from a "credible source", after which the EOW Srinagar opened a preliminary verification. Medical Dialogues reported on 4 February that this preliminary inquiry preceded the registration of a case over what the spokesperson described as fake and forged certificates. The acts "prima facie disclose the commission of cognisable offences", the spokesperson said, and a case was registered at the EOW police station in Srinagar under sections 420, 468, 471 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code. Investigation is continuing; none of the reports named the accused, and no arrest or outcome on the seat itself had been reported.
The failure here was at document verification. Both certificates are issued by government authorities and can be checked with the issuing office. Admission committees often accept the paper at face value during a time-pressed counselling round; in this case the alleged forgery surfaced only when information reached the EOW from an outside source, more than two years after the 2023 admission. A candidate can therefore sit through much of a course before a certificate is ever examined.
The lesson for students and families is blunt. Do not buy a certificate from an agent, however it is described, and do not assume a seat obtained on a forged document is safe once classes begin. A forged reserved-category certificate can be challenged years later, with the admission, and the student faces criminal charges. Candidates genuinely entitled to a quota should obtain certificates only from the designated authority and keep the originals. Everyone else should check closing ranks and results on the official counselling website rather than trust a middleman's promise that a category seat can be arranged.
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This is a news-sourced case summary written by the TrustMBBS team, not a first-person account; see the sources above. They reflect one person's experience and are not a verdict on any institution. Report your own: Report a scam or tell your story.