Chandigarh: Forgery charges pressed in cheating case

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

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Chandigarh, July 14

The Chandigarh Police have added forgery charges against accused persons in a case of alleged cheating, in which high-profile people of the city, including two retired judges of the High Court, were duped.

The police had booked five persons, including a private bank officer, at the Sector 3 police station on March 17, 2020, under Sections 420 and 120-B of the IPC on the basis of a complaint filed by Kuldeep Singh Grewal, a resident of Sector 27.

In its supplementary chargesheet filed in court against accused Saurabh Ghosh, Himanshu Hazra, Ishtaque Ahmed, Munmun Ghosh and Martinyunjoy Banerjee, the police added three additional Sections — 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (fraudulently using forged document) — to the FIR.

In the complaint, Grewal had alleged he, his family, acquaintances and two former judges of High Court were cheated by the relationship manager of a private bank’s Delhi branch. He alleged he lost Rs 52.5 lakh, while others linked to him were defrauded of Rs 6.6 crore.

He claimed the accused along with other co-accused allegedly committed fraud, forgery, criminal breach of trust and illegally transferred funds from their accounts on the pretext of making safe and lucrative investments in various companies/entities created to siphon off funds.

The police in the supplementary challan said the original records and documents obtained from the bank were sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory along with signatures of the accused persons for examination.

The challan said on many occasions, it was found the signatures didn’t match with those on the documents. On the basis of the results, additional charges had been added to the case.

The police alleged during police custody, Saurabh Ghosh in his statement claimed on his insistence, accused Hazra opened a bank account in FinCap International and they duped complainants. However, Rajesh Sharma, counsel for Saurabh and Munmun Ghosh, claimed they were falsely implicated in the case and they would oppose the challan in court.