Charges framed against eight

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 27

A local court has framed charges against eight persons in a cheating and forgery case. The accused were arrested in January by the Chandigarh Police for buying costly mobile phones on loan using forged ID proofs, including PAN and Aadhaar cards.

The police report in the chargesheet filed in April revealed that the accused accessed details of customers from a finance company and forged Aadhaar cards by replacing photographs of the victims with theirs.

This way, the loan instalment was deducted from the Aadhaar-linked bank accounts of the victims. Also, two of the accused were former bank employees, who managed to get the required documents. The accused in the case include Ashish (25), Vishal Sehegal (23), Shakti Singh (29), Sanjeev Kumar (44), Amit Kumar Katwal (31), Kapil Dhingra (24), Baldev Singh (38) and Rajjo (45).

Modus Operandi

The accused include former bankers and  former employees of Bajaj Finance Company. They provided details of customers, which was used by one of the accused to print fake Aadhaar and PAN cards after replacing photographs. They used these ID proofs to buy mobile phones, 

which cost between Rs 65,000 and Rs 70,000 on EMIs. As the Aadhaar and PAN cards were linked to bank accounts of real customers, the instalments were deducted from their accounts. The accused then further sold the mobile phones at cheaper rates and earned a profit.