LANDHAR: The racket in the sale of passports issued on the basis of forged documents became murkier with the ‘arrest of what the SSP, Dinkar Gupla, ‘on July 8 described as a master forger ‘Sukhwinder Singh alias Baba and recovery of a large cache of fake documents and stamps used to attest such papers by him.

Disclosing this at a press conference, he said a city resident Vinod Kumar, an associate of Baba, too, has been arrested and their connections switch employees of the local passport office arrested earlier, have unearthed the racket which had been going on probably in connivance with the former passport officers and other ‘senior officers since the early 90s. Sube Singh. a clerk and president of Josal passport employees union, Vijay Kumar and Rajinder Kumar, both casual workers in the passport office and Surjit Singh of Pattarn Kalam, a beneficiary of a fake passport, had been arrested earlier. While Sube Singh has been remanded to judicial custody till July 20, the remaining three accused are in police remand till later for interrogation.

The SSP said Surjit Singh was supplied the passport of one Gurpal Singh in March 1992 after replacing the photograph of the genuine claimant BVihaton the beneficiary. Sukhwinder Singh, from whom the police also recovered 975 blank affidavits of the denomination of Rs five each confessed during preliminary. interrogation that he had been supplying forged passports for huge sums, according to the SSP. Gupta said while Sukhwinder was operating from outside, Sube Singh was operating from inside the passport office and they had been operating with the help of workers inside and agents outside the passport office. Gupta said Sube Singh was using his position as a union leader to get things done from the officers. The officers in the passport officer had become vulnerable because Sube Singh threatened them with blackmail, he added.

The SSP said preliminary investigations have yielded documents of 15 passports and forged supporting documents of two passport applications.

One forged passport application In the name of a dead person was found pasted with the photograph of his Jeciher who had been deported from Greece as revealed by Sukhwinder Singh, according to SP (detective) Lok Nath, who is supervising investigation of the case.

The SSP said the seizure of documents and interrogation of Sukhwinder Singh has prima facie established the connivance of Sube Singh in the racket. The arrests of passport office employees, particularly Sube Singh, had triggered off an agitation leading to disruption of the office working here for two days earlier this week.

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 14, 1995