Bengaluru: News website claims tracking down fugitive Morgenall CEO Irfan Pasha, his wife in Qatar
Bengaluru: Eight months after a Bengaluru based couple and founders of Morgenall Investment Company, Irfan Pasha and his wife Fathima Maqdooma fled the country allegedly defrauding thousands of investors, Bengaluru based news website has made claims of tracking the fugitive couple in Qatar where they reportedly run a job recruitment company named Credentia HR.
The couple who defrauded investors (mainly Muslims) off thousands of crore rupees in the name of ‘Halal Investment’ wounded their business in late September 2018 and fled the country, leaving the investigating agencies and investors in a fix as they failed to track them.
Bengaluru based journalist Shaik Zakeer Hussain who runs a news website 'thecognate.com' reported that working on an information provided by their source about Irfan and his wife staying in Qatar they investigated the lead and has concluded it to be true.
“Ten days ago, The Cognate received a message from one of the employees of Credentia HR, informing us that both Irfan and Fathima are in Qatar. The employee told us that the duo runs a company there and are recruiting people on visit visas, without paying them salaries. Since it’s illegal to work in Qatar on a visit visa, the employees are unable to lodge a complaint against the company” a report published on thecognate.com on June 24 added.
The report also claims that their investigation led them to the office of Credentia HR and that they were able to verify the details of the company and its ownership to satisfactorily conclude that the duo was in Qatar, running Credentia HR.
“At our request, the employee sent us a copy of the offer letter from Credentia HR, which had Irfan Pasha’s signature and the company’s commercial registration number or C.R. No. on it.
While we were able to match Irfan’s signature with the signature on his passport copy, but we wanted more information to ascertain Irfan’s ownership of the firm. However, the employee was unable to provide any more details” the report adds.
Speaking to Vartha Bharati, Shaikh Zakir Hussain said “We sent our representatives to the office of Credentia HR on Najma Airport Road in Doha but the couple were not at office at that time. Our representatives couldn’t take pictures of the office too. Later we got access to the official trade license’s copy of Credentia HR where the name of the duo was mentioned as the owners along with another ‘Yes mart trading and service’, we couldn’t verify the identity details of ‘Yes mart trading and services’”.
According to the copy of trade license provided in the report, Irfan holds 25% shares of Credentia HR, while his wife Fathima hold 24% of company’s shares.
The document also shows the passport numbers of the duo. The passport number of Fathima is G8573215 and the passport number of Irfan Pasha is L7213058.
“We tried to match these passport numbers with the copy of Irfan Pasha’s passport number, which was circulated widely by Morgenall’s investors on social media, soon after he fled, but to our surprise, it did not match up. However, a little more research revealed us that Irfan holds another passport, whose number matches with the one on his company certificate. This reveals that Irfan Pasha has two passports, one which he used to fly out of India, and was issued in Bengaluru in 2017, and another one, which he used to register his company in Qatar and was issued in Dubai in 2014” the report further added.
As soon as the report was published on The Cognate website, investors and activists have called on the investigating agencies to should immediately take measures to get arrest the couple, who the report claims to be living a ‘luxurious life’.
In November last year, we even met the then External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in Delhi and sought the centre’s help in finding these fraudsters, but nothing came out of it. Now that their location has been confirmed, the government and the investigating agencies have no choice, but to get these people to India, and get us justice. These people are living openly and with absolute impunity, while we are suffering everyday” the report quoted Syed Saif, an investor turned activist.
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Single higher education regulator bill tabled in LS; Oppn flags ‘centralisation,' JPC likely
New Delhi: A bill to set up a 13-member body to regulate institutions of higher education was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan introduced the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, which seeks to establish an overarching higher education commission along with three councils for regulation, accreditation, and ensuring academic standards for universities and higher education institutions in India.
Meanwhile, the move drew strong opposition, with members warning that it could weaken institutional autonomy and result in excessive centralisation of higher education in India.
The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, earlier known as the Higher Education Council of India (HECI) Bill, has been introduced in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The proposed legislation seeks to merge three existing regulatory bodies, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), into a single unified body called the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan.
At present, the UGC regulates non-technical higher education institutions, the AICTE oversees technical education, and the NCTE governs teacher education in India.
Under the proposed framework, the new commission will function through three separate councils responsible for regulation, accreditation, and the maintenance of academic standards across universities and higher education institutions in the country.
According to the Bill, the present challenges faced by higher educational institutions due to the multiplicity of regulators having non-harmonised regulatory approval protocols will be done away with.
The higher education commission, which will be headed by a chairperson appointed by the President of India, will cover all central universities and colleges under it, institutes of national importance functioning under the administrative purview of the Ministry of Education, including IITs, NITs, IISc, IISERs, IIMs, and IIITs.
At present, IITs and IIMs are not regulated by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Government to refer bill to JPC; Oppn slams it
The government has expressed its willingness to refer it to a joint committee after several members of the Lok Sabha expressed strong opposition to the Bill, stating that they were not given time to study its provisions.
Responding to the opposition, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the government intends to refer the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for detailed examination.
Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari warned that the Bill could result in “excessive centralisation” of higher education. He argued that the proposed law violates the constitutional division of legislative powers between the Union and the states.
According to him, the Bill goes beyond setting academic standards and intrudes into areas such as administration, affiliation, and the establishment and closure of university campuses. These matters, he said, fall under Entry 25 of the Concurrent List and Entry 32 of the State List, which cover the incorporation and regulation of state universities.
Tewari further stated that the Bill suffers from “excessive delegation of legislative power” to the proposed commission. He pointed out that crucial aspects such as accreditation frameworks, degree-granting powers, penalties, institutional autonomy, and even the supersession of institutions are left to be decided through rules, regulations, and executive directions. He argued that this amounts to a violation of established constitutional principles governing delegated legislation.
Under the Bill, the regulatory council will have the power to impose heavy penalties on higher education institutions for violating provisions of the Act or related rules. Penalties range from ₹10 lakh to ₹75 lakh for repeated violations, while establishing an institution without approval from the commission or the state government could attract a fine of up to ₹2 crore.
Concerns were also raised by members from southern states over the Hindi nomenclature of the Bill. N.K. Premachandran, an MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party representing Kollam in Kerala, said even the name of the Bill was difficult to pronounce.
He pointed out that under Article 348 of the Constitution, the text of any Bill introduced in Parliament must be in English unless Parliament decides otherwise.
DMK MP T.M. Selvaganapathy also criticised the government for naming laws and schemes only in Hindi. He said the Constitution clearly mandates that the nomenclature of a Bill should be in English so that citizens across the country can understand its intent.
Congress MP S. Jothimani from Tamil Nadu’s Karur constituency described the Bill as another attempt to impose Hindi and termed it “an attack on federalism.”
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