The father of a science teacher arrested amid investigations into a school appointment racket dared the Yogi Adityanath government on Monday to arrest the kingpin who he says lured his daughter with a fake certificate.

Mahipal Singh, a marginal farmer from Rajpalpur in Farrukhabad district, purportedly identified the man by name, profession and district of residence and conjectured he was “politically well connected and is operating in connivance with many powerful leaders”.

Uttar Pradesh basic education minister Satish Dwivedi told reporters in Lucknow that a probe was on to identify the “mastermind” and that it was not “clear whether the arrested teacher is the main culprit”.

The scam burst into the open last week when a newspaper report said a single science teacher, Anamika Shukla, had drawn Rs 1 crore as salary from 25 schools over a 13-month period.

Investigators later said 25 different women were enrolled in these 25 Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas — residential central government schools for Dalit, tribal, OBC and minority girls — under the same false name, Anamika Shukla.

The police on Saturday arrested Mahipal’s daughter Supriya Singh, who they say has been enlisted as a science teacher at a Kasturba school in Kasganj district under the name Anamika Shukla since August 2018. Officers said she drew a monthly salary of Rs 22,000.

Two of the remaining 24 women have been identified so far, a project officer in the basic education department said. He said the identification process was taking time because the schools were closed and were spread across many districts.

“The police visited my home on Saturday after arresting my daughter from Kasganj and seized many documents, including Aadhaar cards and bank passbooks of the entire family,” Mahipal said.

“Nobody seems interested in a teacher from Mainpuri district who tempted us and took Rs 1.5 lakh as a bribe to provide my daughter with a forged BEd certificate and an appointment letter in the name of Anamika Shukla. He took a cheque for Rs 1 lakh and the remaining Rs 50,000 in cash.”

Mahipal said the man had also replaced his daughter’s existing certificates with forgeries in the name of Anamika Shukla.

“I’m sure the government and the police are not interested in this teacher, who had identified himself as Raj. He is teacher at a primary school in the Kampil area of Mainpuri district,” he said.

It isn’t clear why all the forged certificates mentioned the same name — which increases the chances of detection — and had not been issued in the women teachers’ own names. One possible reason is that the racketeers had managed to procure a single forged BEd certificate and used copies of it in every instance.

Mahipal said Supriya had cleared her intermediate from Ram Darshani Government Inter College, Bhatasa, in 2015 and BA from S.D. College in 2018.