Punjab Police Inspector among 5 nailed for fake promotion orders

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 19

Five persons — a Punjab Police Inspector, a head constable, two superintendents and a dismissed Sub-Inspector (SI) — have been arrested by the UT police for issuing fake promotion orders bearing the signatures of then Punjab DGP Sidharth Chattopadhyaya.

A case was registered by the UT police last week on a complaint of Vibhor Kumar, staff officer of the then DGP.

Kumar had received four orders, which were fake. On verification, it was found that some of the police officials had been promoted on fake orders and also the bad entries in ACRs of an Inspector were eliminated under the forged signatures of Chattopadhyaya.

The UT police interrogated all beneficiaries who got promotion and others benefits, which led to the revelation that five persons had prepared fake orders in connivance with each other.

The police then arrested Inspector Satwant Singh, who was posted at the cyber cell, Mohali, Sandeep Kumar (55), a superintendent, GP fund branch, Bahadur Singh (52), a superintendent, E-1 branch, Head Constable Mani Katoch (33) and Sarabjit Singh (47), a dismissed SI of the Punjab Police.

Divulging information about the role of each suspect, a police official said both Satwant and Sarabjit claimed to have close links with the then DGP, and meetings to prepare forged orders were conducted at Sarabjit’s house in Mohali. The duo then got the forged orders prepared by Sandeep and Mani.

“Sandeep prepared forged orders in his laptop with the help of Mani, who was recently transferred from Amritsar to 13th Battalion, Sector 1, Chandigarh,” the police said.

The forged promotion orders were then given to Satwant, who managed to put forged signatures of Chattopadhyaya on the orders.

After Bahadur Singh made an entry in the dispatch register of the branch and the same orders were circulated accordingly. The police said forged orders, laptop, CPU, mobile phones, dispatch register and a car had been recovered from the suspects.

Two suspects have a criminal past. While Sandeep was booked in a case of the Prevention of Corruption Act, Sarabjit was booked in an NDPS case.

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