POLICE ARREST THREE FROM PALGHAR IN BAIL SURETY RACKET

MUMBAI:UNIT 1 of Mumbai crime branch on Thursday arrested three men from Palghar for submitting forged solvency certificates and other documents in court to secure bail.

The accused have been identified as Santosh Pandurang Shinde, 42, Abdul Amadadali Shaikh, 44, and Nazir Mohammd Sayyad, 41.

During their search, the officials found forged solvency certificates, rubber stamps of tehsildars of Palghar, Malad, Vasai, Panvel, Valivgaon, Mahad and rubber stamps of several police stations outside Mumbai. They also recovered fake Aadhaar cards and ration cards.

“We have registered separate cases against the accused. They also have links in Nashik, Pune and other districts of Maharashtra, where they submitted forged solvency certificates to secure bail for those accused in serious offences,” said deputy commissioner of police, Dilip Sawant of the crime branch.

In many serious offences, the court asks the accused to submit solvency certificate used by a tehsildar to grant bail.

“The accused would contact the persons seeking bail to provide them forged solvency certificates,” said the official. The courts usually send correspondence to officers concerned (tehsildar) to verify it and the officer submits the report in court. But here, the accused would collect the correspondence from court and submit the forged report using rubber stamps of the tehsildar concerned, the official said. “There are several other suspects involved and we will arrest them once their link is verified,” said Sawant. The accused were produced in court on Thursday and remanded in police custody till December 26.