Man nabbed for using fake stamps of MLAs, officials to make documents

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, May 26

The CIA-2 wing of the Ludhiana Commissionerate today nabbed the owner of a cyber cafe for running an illegal trade of making fake official documents. The suspect had prepared fake stamps of two MLAs of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to authenticate the documents.

The suspect has been identified as Avtar Singh (23) of Basti Jodhewal. The police seized 13 PAN cards, two voter ID cards, nine Aadhaar Cards, 80 blank PAN cards, 40 blank Voter ID cards, 200 blank Aadhaar cards, two RC smart cards, all fake documents, and nine fake stamps of MLAs, councillors and sarpanches from the suspect.

ADCP (Crime) Rupinder Kaur Sran, ACP Gurpreet Singh and in-charge, CIA, Inspector Beant Juneja issued a joint statement in this regard.

Police officials said the suspect had been charging a huge fee from the people to make fake Aadhaar cards with forged stamps of MLAs or other government officials. Since he was using fake stamps or signatures, he was charging between Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 for every document.

The officials said two stamps of AAP MLA from the North constituency Madan Lal Bagga and Central constituency MLA Gurpreet Gogi were seized and it could be possible that the suspect might have prepared stamps of all MLAs of Ludhiana for making and updating details of Aadhaar cards, driving licences, vehicle registration certificates, voters cards, etc.

The police said role of some private company employees who had been entrusted the task to verify the documents before approving Aadhaar card was also under scanner.

The police suspected that with the help of fake Aadhaar cards and other documents, some criminal elements might have bought SIM cards to be used in various crimes. Two days’ remand of the cyber cafe was sought from court and in further questioning, more suspects involved in the racket will be nabbed.