E-Paper
Forgery of Punjab DGP’s orders: Accused removed bad entries from Ludhiana cop’s annual report
The said cop, inspector Daljit, is posted in Ludhiana and as per the complaint from the Punjab DGP office, through an order, dated January 8, the bad entries in his ACR were eliminated; the order later turned out to be fake
Adverse entries in the annual confidential report (ACR) of an inspector were also removed by the accused while forging orders of the then Punjab director general of police (DGP).
This was shared with a local court that took up the anticipatory bail plea of one of the key suspects, sub-inspector Harwinder Singh, in connection with the recent forgery of Punjab DGP’s orders.
The said inspector, Daljit, is posted in Ludhiana and as per the complaint from the DGP office, through an order, dated January 8, the bad entries in his ACR were eliminated. The order later turned out to be fake.
The forged order stated that the said inspector had got appreciation letters from two senior officials for his work and thus his bad entries be removed.
Considering the submissions, the court dismissed Harwinder’s plea for anticipatory bail.
The Chandigarh Police had registered a case on January 11, following a complaint by Vibhor Kumar, a staff officer with the Punjab DGP office, Sector 9, Chandigarh. He had complained to the UT Police that he had received four fake promotion orders under the forged signature of the then Punjab DGP, Siddharth Chattopadhyaya. These fake orders included two regarding promotions of Punjab Police personnel, one removing bad entries from some ACRs and another about recruitment of two constables.
A case under Sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating), 464 (false document in the name of a fictitious person), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security, or to receive any money, etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered in this regard.
So far, police have arrested six people in the case, including Kulwinder Singh, personal assistant of the former DGP, inspector Satwant Singh Sidhu, posted in Mohali; a dismissed sub-inspector, Sarabjit Singh; Sandeep Kumar and Bahadur Singh, both working as superintendents in Punjab DGP’s office; and head constable Mani Katoch, whose name figures in the forged promotion list. All are currently in police remand.
Readied orders in DGP office
Investigations into the forgery of the four orders revealed that the accused prepared the orders in the DGP office itself.
The police are yet to arrest assistant sub-inspector Harwinder Singh, sub-inspector Satinder Pal Singh and constable Sanjiv, who are among the beneficiaries of the forged orders, issued on January 4 and 8.
“Accused Satinder Pal and Kulwinder used to sit together in DGP office and prepare the forged orders. A laptop containing these orders has been recovered,” said Ketan Bansal, superintendent of police (City), Chandigarh.
