FIITJEE owner among 12 booked for closure of centres in Delhi-NCR

The owner of FIITJEE and 11 others have been booked on a complaint by parents of students of the coaching institute after the closure of several of its centres in Delhi-NCR, the police said on Saturday.

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FIITJEE founder DK Goyal, chief financial officer Rajiv Babbar, chief operating officer Manish Anand and its Greater Noida branch head Ramesh Batlesh have been named in the FIR, a spokesperson for the Noida police said.

“Based on the complaint of parents, a case has been registered on charges of criminal conspiracy and breach of trust,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Noida) Rambadan Singh said.

On Friday, several FIITJEE centres unexpectedly shut down across Delhi-NCR and many teachers resigned allegedly due to non-payment of salaries for months. FIITJEE provides coaching for competitive exams to engineering aspirants and has 73 centres across the country.

Citing a complaint by Satsang Kumar, a resident of Greater Noida, the Noida police spokesperson said the institute’s centre in Noida Sector 62 was open till Tuesday, but was shut an hour before schedule.

Later, it was found that the centre had been permanently closed. He claimed that more than 2,000 students studied at the centre. Similar allegations were made by Manoj Kumar, a resident of Sector Omega 2 of Greater Noida. The abrupt closure of FIITJEE centres has left many students, who have paid fees running into lakhs of rupees, in the lurch.

Meanwhile, in Ghaziabad, the FIITJEE centre in Rajnagar district centre was found running illegally. A case was registered in connection with the discovery at the Kavinagar police station by DIOS Dharmendra Sharma against Goyal, Babbar, Anand and Asheesh Gupta, Assistant Commissioner of Police Abhishek Srivastav said.

On January 13, two men, Maneesh Gupta and HR Kapoor, filed a complaint in which they stated that they had deposited Rs 3-5 lakh as the coaching fees.

The complaint was handed over to DIOS Sharma, who after investigating found that the coaching centre was operating without registration.

The original permission had expired in 2022, the officer said. The institute operators violated norms under the Uttar Pradesh Regulation of Coaching Act, 2002, the police said.

The coaching centre operators were not giving salaries to the tutors and the staff that was why they left the centre, the police said. The case was registered under Sections 318 (4) (cheating) and 316 (2) (criminal breach of trust) of the BNS.