The Enforcement Directorate has alleged that Faridabad-based Al-Falah University had appointed three doctors identified as suspects in the November 10 blast near Delhi’s Red Fort without police verification, reported PTI on Saturday.

Two of the doctors – Muzammil Ganaie and Shaheen Saeed – were arrested by the National Investigation Agency, while the third – Umar Nabi – is alleged to have been driving the car that exploded and killed 15 people.

On Friday, the ED said it has filed a chargesheet before a Delhi court against the university’s Chairperson Jawad Ahmed Siddiqui and the Al-Falah Charitable Trust, which controls the group’s educational institutions, in a money laundering case.

The court is yet to take cognisance of the ED chargesheet, PTI reported.

The Al-Falah group has been under scrutiny in an investigation linked to the November 10 blast.

Siddiqui was arrested on November 18 and is in judicial custody.

The central agency also provisionally attached assets worth about Rs 140 crore belonging to Al-Falah University, which is owned by the Al-Falah group.

According to the ED chargesheet, the university employed doctors “on paper” and listed them under a “22-day punch” or “two days per week” clause, to represent them as regular faculty and obtain approvals from the National Medical Commission, PTI reported, quoting unidentified officials.

Bhupinder Kaur Anand, the vice-chancellor of the university, reportedly confirmed to the ED that the three doctors had been appointed based on recommendations from the human resources head and approvals by Siddiqui. Anand added that “no police verification or scrutiny” was conducted.

The central agency has alleged that some doctors were hired temporarily to meet regulatory requirements and others were on the payroll without attending classes or seeing patients.

These “on paper staff” were aware of their status and were provided with “fake” work experience certificates, the agency alleged, according to PTI.

The ED also alleged that fake patients were admitted shortly before inspections and that the hospital was largely non-functional weeks before National Medical Commission assessments.

The commission is a regulatory body for medical education and practice.

The chargesheet alleged that Siddiqui and the Trust misrepresented the university’s National Assessment and Accreditation Council accreditation and University Grants Commission recognition to “deceive” students, generating illicit funds of Rs 493.24 crore from fees paid for tuition and examinations.

Certificates for courses were obtained from the Haryana government through fraudulent means, The Indian Express quoted the agency as saying.

The case

The blast near the Red Fort metro station left 13 persons dead. Umar Un Nabi, a doctor, was believed to have been driving the car that exploded. Two days after the explosion, the Union government described it as a “terrorist incident”.

Since then, the National Investigation Agency has arrested at least nine persons linked to the blast.

Hours before the blast, the police also said that it had cracked an “inter-state and transnational terror module” in Faridabad and Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur. The police said at the time that it had recovered 2,900 kg of improvised explosive device-making material in raids in several states.

During its investigation, the police had alleged that the key suspects in the case, including Nabi, who was a faculty member, used a room on the Al-Falah Medical College campus in Haryana’s Faridabad to plan logistics for transporting ammonium nitrate for multiple blasts in the National Capital Region.

The college is part of Al-Falah University.

The vehicle used in the blast had also been parked inside the campus for nearly 20 days, the police had said at the time.

Siddiqui, who has also been the chancellor of Al-Falah University since 2014, had been taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act after investigators examined material seized during searches conducted on November 18.

The case filed by the Enforcement Directorate was based on two first information reports filed by the Delhi Police, which alleged that Al-Falah University had falsely claimed accreditation by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council and misrepresented its eligibility under the University Grants Commission Act.