Fake sureties bail out accused easily

FOR 25K-50K Cops say fake surety racket in metropolitan, sessions courts helps those charged with serious offences abscond

MUMBAI: In July 2017, murder accused Faisal Shaikh was granted bail after he produced two sureties. A year later, the Mumbai Police’s crime branch realised that the accused in Sahani’s murder case had been granted bail after producing fake sureties. Similarly, in October 2017, Balwant Solanki, accused of molesting a 13-year-old girl, was released on bail by the execution of a personal bond of ₹30,000 with one solvent surety for the amount. The crime branch found that Balwant had secured bail by furnishing a fake surety.

The fake surety racket has been something of an open secret in the Mumbai Police. Officials say the lack of concrete evidence has prevented them moving against the racketeers. That changed when Unit 1 of Mumbai crime branch formed a special team.

On October 25, a crime branch team nabbed eight people outside the sessions court in Fort. One of them was 34-year-old Riyaz Pathan. During interrogation, Pathan confessed to running a syndicate in at least nine court premises across the city, including seven chief metropolitan courts and two sessions courts. So far, the police have learnt that at least 25-30 advocates were in regular contact with Pathan and his men. In a non-descript lane inside a Govandi slum, Pathan, who goes by the alias of Papa, stays in a ground-plus-one structure with his family of 14.

“This house is built by my husband. Neither of my two sons have put a single penny in its building,” Pathan’s mother told HT. She and others in Pathan’s family say they have no knowledge of Pathan doing any illegal work. To his family and neighbours, Pathan is in the business of making footwear like his father before him.

The police believe Pathan owns two other houses in the area, for which he used profits from the fake surety scam. His bank records show a regular influx of money from different bank accounts, which the police suspect are beneficiaries of the fake sureties.

When the police raided Pathan’s office in Govandi, they found printers, a scanner machine, laptops and more than 100 forged documents and identity cards. These included documents with forged company letterheads and reports that appeared to be signed by senior police officers but were actually forged. The police believe advocates would hand the court’s letter - directing the police to verify the surety – to Pathan’s men who would then send a fake letter with the police stamp and seal to the court’s judicial staff, claiming physical verification has been completed.

Pathan charged between ₹25,000 and ₹50,000 for fake sureration-cards ties and forged documents, said Dilip Sawant, deputy commissioner of police, crime branch. The person appearing as a fake surety would get ₹5,000 to ₹7,000 as their cut, depending on the grievousness of the offence. The touts and advocates’ assistants would earn around ₹5,000 per surety and Pathan kept the remaining amount, a considerable percentage of which would be shared between his gang members. The bulk of the cases for which Pathan provided sureties were assaults, thefts and narcotics, but the police say he also helped those accused of murder and sexual offences against children.

Having recruited a group of men for his gang around 2013, Pathan would go on to establish a deep network in 118 courts over the next five years. The crime branch found their handiwork in electricity bills, employee identity cards, salary slips and even submitted in court. Some fake sureties even posed as government employees.

Police have found that over 200 persons appeared as fake sureties, many of them appearing even twice or thrice in some cases. “It is possible that due to the workload of the courts, the staff did not verify the documents properly or spend ample amount of time to cross-check the authenticity of the submitted documents in the courts,” said Vinayak Mer, inspector at unit-1, crime branch.

The crime branch has started writing to private companies and the government departments to verify the authenticity of the seized documents. In the first few weeks of the probe, concerned officials from the BMC, BEST and other private companies responded to the police confirming that the documents are forged. The names of employees listed on these forged documents are not even employees of either of the companies, said Mer.

After unearthing the racket, the crime branch filed applications before the chief metropolitan magistrate in Esplanade court, seeking the list of cases in which fake sureties were used. Five days after the eight men were arrested, the Esplanade chief magistrate passed an order directing the metropolitan courts to impart details of the cases that the investigating agency needs. A similar application was filed in the sessions court too. A growing number of the sureties have been verified to be false and the police are now waiting for the verification process to be completed for all the relevant cases.

THE FAKE SURETY RACKET HAS BEEN SOMETHING OF AN OPEN SECRET IN THE MUMBAI POLICE. OFFICIALS SAY THE LACK OF CONCRETE EVIDENCE HAS PREVENTED THEM MOVING AGAINST THE RACKETEERS. THAT CHANGED WHEN UNIT 1 OF MUMBAI CRIME BRANCH FORMED A SPECIAL TEAM