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Journalism of Courage
THE ANTI Terrorism Branch (ATB) of the Pimpri Chinchwad police has launched a probe into a suspected organised racket of giving fake police verification certificates for a mere charge of around Rs 1,600. Probe revealed such fraudulent certificates were being issued to be used by various entities to hire contractual staffers for jobs as security guards, drivers, housekeeping staff among others.
Following directives from Pimpri Chinchwad Police Commissioner Vinay Kumar Choubey, a team from the ABT, led by inspector Vikas Raut, was conducting certain checks of sensitive installations and was verifying documentation of people employed on a contractual basis.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Dr Shivaji Pawar, who was supervising the operation, said, “While conducting checks at a telecommunications company in Dighi, our team found out that the fake police verification certificates were submitted by several contractual employees. The team found out that some certificates issued by police entities were originally found to be issued in the names of other people, when their serial numbers were checked.
While checking some other serial numbers, it was found that they were never issued by the respective police entities. A thorough sweep of the certificates used in this one single entity revealed that 41 of them were either fake or fraudulently obtained.”
DCP Pawar added, “The questioning of those who had submitted these certificates has led us to identify some suspects and we believe that there is an organised racket operating for this purpose. We found that anywhere between Rs 1,200 and 1,600 was taken from each of the persons to get these fraudulent certificates. These employees had sent their documents to certain people on WhatsApp and a PDF of the fake certificates in their name was given in 10 to 15 days. Some certificates had vague and false addresses of the persons and some others were issued in the name of police stations that do not exist.”
“We have launched a coordinated probe in the case and have reasons to believe a much larger number of such fake certificates have been issued since 2021. We hope to arrest the suspects, who are part of this organised operation, soon. We are also urging various commercial, private and government entities to make sure their employees have legally obtained police verification certificates.”
