WOMAN SUBMITS FAKE DEATH CERTIFICATE OF HER BROTHER, BOOKED BY COPS

Vijay Kumar Yadav

MUMBAI: The Azad Maidan police have booked a woman in her mid-twenties for allegedly trying to get a criminal case closed against her 23-year-old brother, a law student, by producing his fake death certificate to a city court.

Her brother was arrested in September 2019 for allegedly harassing, stalking and threatening a student. Police officials said that the accused, identified as Deepika Taraikar, had on August 4 2021, submitted the death certificate of her brother Himalay Maruti Devkate to the Esplanade Metropolitan Magistrate Court.

The certificate was issued by the local authority at a village in Nanded district that is also the native place of Devkate and was submitted to the court for getting the case against her brother closed. Following this, the court had directed the Marine Drive police station, where the FIR was registered against Devkate, to verify the authenticity of the death certificate. The police did a verification check on April 5 and submitted their report, revealing that when they visited the Tamlur village panchayat in the Nanded district, they did not find any matching details with the death certificate in the village panchayat record and that the certificate was fake.

“The serial number on the death certificate was registered in another deceased person’s name – a 50-year-old man. The police also recorded the statement of Devkate’s father, Maruti Devkate, who revealed that his son (Himalay) was alive,” said Subhash Baisane, a judicial clerk at court room no. 3 and complainant in the case.

After receipt of the police report, the metropolitan magistrate court directed the Azad Maidan police to register an FIR against Taraikar. Accordingly, the police have booked her under sections 465 (punishment for forgery), 466 (forgery of record of Court or of public register, etc), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of the IPC.