Doctor held for sending emails to govt officers, impersonating as PMO official

Parikh used two email ids — chiefsecpmo@gmail.com and pmorrkushwaha@gmail.com — to impersonate as an official from the PMO, asking the state police to act on a case of office site dispute between Dr Parikh and one Nitesh Shah in Parimal Garden of Ahmedabad.

“The accused sent the emails with subject line, ‘Urgent attention anticipated from the office of Prime Minister of India’ with two email ids, impersonating as officials of the PMO. The accused sent a number of ‘word doc’ files in the mail and each word doc had the emblem of Ashoka Chakra and PMO written over it as a letterhead,” said an officer of the Ahmedabad Cyber Crime Cell.

“The accused mentioned in the emails that the PMO was closely monitoring the case of an office site dispute between Dr Parikh and one Nitesh Shah and chided the state officials for their inaction on the matter. Prima facie, the email ids appeared impersonated as government office’s ids end with domain nic.in,” the officer added.

Dr Parikh was arrested for allegedly impersonating a government official and forgery. “Using the IP address of the device from which the emails were sent, a team picked up the accused doctor from Amreli where he practises. He told us that he had created the email ids in 2019 to seek action of an office site dispute in which he wanted work done in his favour,” added the officer.

The doctor has been booked under Indian Penal Code sections 170 for pretending to hold any particular office as public servant, 465 for forgery, 466 for forgery of court record or register, 471 for fraudulently using a forged document as genuine and 476 for counterfeiting device or mark used for authenticating documents.