PWD complains govt employees faked allotment letters for flats; police probe
Police have opened an investigation into a PWD complaint about a racket involving forgery of documents and official letterheads to take illegal possession of government flats.
Police have opened an investigation into a PWD complaint about a racket involving forgery of documents and official letterheads to take illegal possession of government flats. A case of cheating and forgery has been registered in this regard at the IP Estate police station in Central Delhi.
It is learnt that senior PWD officials approached police earlier this week after an internal inquiry revealed that at least nine government employees had taken unlawful possession of Delhi administration flats on the basis of forged documents.
A data entry operator,working on a contract basis with the PWD,is suspected to have conspired with these employees and issued unauthorised offer letters of allotment,forged authorisation slips and fake letters.
Principal Secretary (PWD) Nutan Guha said initially,a discrepancy was noticed in just one case. “But to detect if there were other such cases,we cross-checked the allotments and found that at least eight other beneficiaries were allotted flats illegally. We have approached the respective departments to take action against the accused. The data entry operator has been missing since the day the inquiry was initiated.”
Police said the racket was uncovered because PWD nodal officer for Dwarka,Bhupender Kumar,was present at a junior engineer’s office when one of the accused turned up with a forged allotment letter.
In his statement to police,Kumar said he visited the Delhi administration flats in Dwarka on July 16 after he was instructed by Guha to inquire about a complaint of sub-letting. “While I was sitting in the office of JE (Civil)… a head constable in the Department of Transport appeared before the engineer with an ‘authority letter’ for taking possession of a flat in Block 4 of Dwarka. Since I issue all authority letters and no allotment had been made for the Type-II quarters for over two months,I became suspicious and saw the letter. My signatures on it had been forged,” Kumar told police.
When Kumar confronted the head constable,the man fled from the junior engineer’s office.
On checking the complete status of this flat,serious discrepancies were noticed. Kumar found more bogus allotment documents “implanted in the allotment files” of the dealing assistant.
“These files contained bogus application forms,bogus offer letters,acceptance letters,letters to DDO and bogus authority slips,besides having bogus noting sheet containing forged signatures of dealing assistants,” Kumar said.
He alerted senior officials and five teams were constituted for making inquiries at the offices of assistant and junior engineers in Dwarka,Hari Nagar,Gulabi Bagh,Timarpur,Nimri Colony and Rohini.
On preliminary scrutiny of the authorisation slips,it was found that eight more flats were allotted on the basis of forged documents. The beneficiaries have been identified. The inquiry report also pointed out that the data entry operator,working on a contract basis in the PWD secretariat,was involved in the forged allotments and conspired with the government employees for monetary gain.
Devesh Srivastava,Additional Commissioner of Police (Central),said,“The PWD approached us after an internal inquiry found that forged documents were used in allotment of flats. We are bringing all evidence on record,the accused have been traced and action will be taken against them.”
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