35 booked for Army job scam

Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, February 17

The Army Recruiting Office (ARO), Ludhiana, unearthed a major job scam under which 35 youths were enrolled by preparing fake certificates. A case has been registered.

Recently, the Ludhiana police had booked Mohinder Singh, former havildar in the Infantry Battalion, Territorial Army, and Surinder Pal, a clerk in the ARO’s civilian department. Their questioning has led to the new development.

The 35 accused are Sanjay Singh, Jaswinder Singh, Vinod Kumar, Manpreet Singh, Kuldeep Singh, Sonu Singh, Rajbir Singh, Vikram Singh, Manjit Singh, Govind Singh, Sunny Singh, Ramesh Singh, Sushil Singh, Jagdeep Singh, Charanjit Singh, Ashok Singh, Rahul, Pradeep Singh, Lovepreet Singh, Jagdeep Singh, Vijender Singh, Pawan Singh, Pawanveer Singh, Manjit Singh, Deepak Singh, Vikash Kumar Maan, Tarun Sharma, Kuldeep Singh, Pardeep Singh, Sonu, Vikram Singh, Premjeet Singh, Pardeep Singh, Amarjeet Singh and Sandeep.

Col Vishal Dubey, director, ARO, told the police that the recruits were enrolled in September 2018. Their residence, caste and kandi certificates were issued by the tehsildar, naib tehsildar of their respective tehsils and sub-tehsils.

“In January, a gang of touts was arrested in Ropar, which was in illegal possession of fake stamps and seals of local and Ludhiana tehsildars. The touts were verifying the residence certificates of the candidates by using fake stamps. A civil defence employee of our office was also involved in this and is in the police custody since February 1. On detailed scrutiny, the fake certificates were found to be correct during the online verification. Following which, the ARO carried out the verification of the suspected candidates by sending a team to the addresses provided in the residence certificates. The same was confirmed and attested on a certificate by the respective house owner, MC councillor, sarpanch and MLA. But none of the addresses was found to be correct,” he said.