35 BOOKED FOR USING FORGED DOCUMENTS TO GET ARMY JOB
RACKET Matter came to light when army’s Ludhiana recruitment office conducted a scrutiny of certificates in the wake of the arrest of a gang in Rupnagar last month
Thirty-five youths from Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan were booked on Saturday for allegedly using fake documents, mainly residence proofs, to get recruited into the army in September last year.
› A physical verification of the suspects was carried out by sending staff to the addresses provided in the documents. The addresses given were found to be fake. COL VISHAL DUBEY , director, army recruitment office (Ludhiana)
LUDHIANA: Thirty-five youths from Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan were booked on Saturday for allegedly using fake documents, mainly residence proofs, to get recruited into the army in September last year.
The matter came to light when the army recruitment office (ARO), Ludhiana, conducted a detailed scrutiny of certificates of the candidates in the wake of the arrest of a gang in Rupnagar last month and seized from them fake stamps and seals of police and revenue officials of Ludhiana and Rupnagar districts.
Army recruitment office director Colonel Vishal Dubey said a verification of the suspect candidates was carried out by sending staff to the addresses provided in the documents which were shown as confirmed or attested by the house owners, municipal councillors, sarpanches or local MLAs. The addresses of these candidates were found to be fake, he said.
The candidates are believed to have forged addresses of Ludhiana, Mohali and Rupnagar, SBS Nagar and Moga as the army’s Ludhiana centre conducts recruitment for these districts only.
An FIR was registered at the division number 5 police station against Sanjay Singh, Jaswinder Singh, Vinod Kumar, Manpreet Singh, Kuldeep Singh, Sonu Singh, Rajbeer Singh, Vikram Singh, Manjeet Singh, Govind Singh, Sunny Singh, Ramkesh Singh, Sushil Singh, Jagdeep Singh, Charanjit Singh, Ashok Singh, Rahul, Pradeep Singh, Lovepreet Singh, Jagdeep Singh, Vijendra, Pawan Singh, Pawanveer Singh, Manjeet, Deepak Singh, Vikas Kumar Mann, Tarun Sharma, Kuldeep Singh, Pradeep Singh, Sonu, Vikram Singh, Premjit Singh, Pradeep Singh, Amarjeet Singh and Sandeep Singh among others. They are from various parts of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
Col Dubey said a civil defence employee of their office was also involved in the racket and he was handed over to police in a case registered on February 1.
He said it was found during the verification that the address of two candidates was same. When checked, the residence belonged to Mohinder Singh, a former army havildar and kingpin of the gang, against whom an arrest warrant was issued on February 11, he added.
Also, addresses of some candidates did not exist.
Investigating officer Manjeet Singh said the case was registered under Sections of 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 465 (punishment for forgery), 467 (forging a document which purports to be a valuable security or a will etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) of the Indian Penal Code.
On January 19, the Rupnagar police had arrested Amit K umar and Manoj Kumar, both residents of the Ferozepur cantonment area, Manjit Singh and Sunil of Jind district in the neighbouring Haryana and Yogesh Kumar, the racket kingpin and a resident of Salem Tabri in Ludhiana. Twenty nine Aadhaar cards, fake documents of 48 individuals, 68 attestation stamps of station house officers (SHOs), tehsildars and municipal councillors were recovered from them.