NEW DELHI, Feb 3 : The Ghaziabad Police bust of a forgery racket that used fake addresses to obtain passports from the Delhi Passport Office has resulted in five arrests so far, while the Bhojpur police station SHO and eight sub-inspectors have been shunted over alleged lack of oversight, officials said on Tuesday.
The case surfaced after the Regional Passport Officer flagged suspicious applications in December last year, in which multiple passports were issued using the same address and mobile number. Subsequent verification revealed that none of the applicants actually resided at the addresses mentioned, under the Bhojpur police station limits, police said.
Police Commissioner J Ravindra Gaur ordered disciplinary action against Station House Officer (SHO) Sachin Kumar and eight sub-inspectors, who were shifted to the police lines for alleged lapses in supervision and verification, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Modinagar) Amit Saxena told PTI.
“The SHO has been sent to police lines due to poor monitoring of police functioning at the station,” he said.
Police station clerk Deepak Kumar has been suspended for allegedly misusing the digital IDs of the sub-inspectors to carry out passport verification during his duty, Saxena said.
Investigators are also examining around 30 mobile numbers linked to the passports issued in the case. These numbers are suspected to belong to agents, police personnel and employees of the postal department, officials said.
Five accused have been arrested so far. They include postman Arun Kumar (32), a resident of Meerut; agents Vivek Gandhi (35) and Prakash Subba (60), both from Delhi; and Aman Deep (19) and his mother Satwant Kaur (61), residents of Tilak Nagar in west Delhi.
The arrests were made on Sunday, and the accused have been questioned by security agencies, police said.
According to investigators, the postman allegedly charged Rs 2,000 per passport to hand over documents directly to members of the racket instead of delivering them to the listed addresses.
“The motive behind obtaining these forged passports will become clear after the arrest of the absconding suspects,” ACP Saxena said, adding that further investigation is underway and intelligence agencies are probing the wider network behind the racket. (PTI)
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