Woman elopes with boyfriend, brothers submit fake birth certificate to cops to claim she is minor

According to the police, the girl in question, Muskan, had gone missing from her house in Malwani gate number 5 area on November 16.

Her brothers Afzal, Ramzan and Muktar approached Malwani police and first filed a missing person’s case.

Later, the trio approached police and requested them to register a kidnapping case and trace their sister as she was a minor. The brothers also submitted a birth certificate, the police said.

As per the Supreme Court guidelines, whenever a minor goes missing, even if it is a case of running away from home, the police are bound to register a kidnapping case directly and not a missing person’s complaint and put serious efforts to trace the minor.

Hence, the Malwani police converted the girl’s missing person’s complaint into a kidnapping case and started looking for the girl.

During inquiry, police officers doubted the genuineness of the birth certificate submitted by girl’s brothers. Hence, they wrote to the concerned authority in girl’s village that had issued the certificate.

The police got a response stating the said certificate is bogus and the girl is not a minor. It was also revealed that the girl was in love with a young man and eloped with him, said a police officer.

After this revelation, the police took suo motu action and registered a case of cheating and forgery against the girl’s three brothers for intentionally submitting bogus documents to the police to wrongly get a kidnapping case registered.

On senior inspector Chimaji Adhav’s instructions, the three brothers Afzal, Ramzan and Muktar were charged under sections 420, 465, 466,468, 471, 182 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code.

“Now that it has found the girl is not a minor, the kidnapping case would be closed by submitting a summary to the court,” said assistant inspector Shiv Bhosale.

The girl still hasn’t returned to her home, and she has also switched off her phone.

The police said there are several such cases of fake birth certificates in Malwani and police are taking strict action.