A 26-year-old man’s guilt-driven attempt to get his engineering degree revoked because he cheated in an exam has failed to find support in the Bombay High Court. A division bench of justices Shantanu Kemkar and MS Karnik on Tuesday rejected Vaibhav Patil’s petition that had sought directions for Mumbai University to cancel his Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree. The bench concluded there was no provision in the University Act through which the court could entertain the plea.
But the sympathetic judges also said they didn’t want to put Vaibhav through more trauma by accepting the petition, which would have exposed him to prosecution. After the hearing, Vaibhav told Mirror he was disappointed, but respected the court’s decision. “I wanted to overcome the guilt and shame of cheating and that’s why I had asked university officials to revoke my degree. When that didn’t work, I approached the court,” he said. “But I will try to move on now.” Vaibhav, from Jalgaon, completed his engineering course with IT specialisation in 2011. But he didn’t take up any job because he could not get over the fact that he had cheated to obtain the degree.