25 get three-yr jail in Moga passport scam

Kulwinder Sandhu

Tribune News Service

Moga, February 21

Chief Judicial Magistrate Deepti Gupta today sentenced 25 persons, including three policemen, 19 travel agents and an employee of the Regional Passport Office, to three years of imprisonment and also imposed a fine of Rs 11,000 on each of them after having found them guilty in the Moga passport scam.

As many 44 accused persons were, however, acquitted by the court after no concrete evidence of their involvement was found in the scam.

However, in the evening all convicted persons were released on bail by the court after they furnished their bail bonds and deposited the fine amount.

The scam was first highlighted by The Tribune on July 22, 2008. An FIR under Sections 420, 465, 468 and 471 of the IPC, Section 2/8 of the Passport Act and Sections 13 (2) and 88 of the Prevention of Corruption Act was registered in the scam in July 2008. Three former policemen Jaswinder Singh, Ranjit Singh and Gurdial Singh, Municipal Council employee Ranjit Singh, postman Om Prakash and former employee of the Regional Passport Office (RPO), Chandigarh, Didar Singh were the kingpins of the scam.

The policemen posted in the passport branch of the local SSP office were dismissed from service when the scam came to light.

During the course of investigations, at least 395 passports were found to have been made on forged documents in connivance with the accused persons and 19 travel agents.

The scrutiny of records for the year 2006-07 revealed that 387 passports issued by the RPO (Chandigarh) were made by tampering with the official records, forging the documents of age, education, address proofs, marriage certificates and others.

The main chargesheet in the case was filed by the local police in the District and Sessions Court at Faridkot on June 4, 2011 against 56 accused. Later, the case was transferred to Moga after the formation of District and Sessions Court here.

Many subsequent FIRs had also been registered by the police besides the main case. At least 250 NRIs are presently facing separate trials in the scam in various local courts. The lookout notices were issued against at least 400 NRIs, who had made fake passports to go abroad.

The modus operandi was that the police employees posted between 1995 and 2008 in the passport branch here prepared fake documents of police verifications and then by manipulating with the travel agents or employees of the RPO tampered with the original forms.

Modus operandi

The police employees posted between 1995 and 2008 in the passport branch here prepared fake documents of police verifications and then by manipulating with the travel agents or employees of the RPO tampered with the original forms