E-Paper
₹1.25-crore stamp scam surfaces in Meerut
The scam was exposed after a sub-registrar office found a few stamps of value ₹25,000 suspicious and a case was registered in Sept last year on the direction of district magistrate
MEERUT Officials busted a stamp scam in the district and recovered more than 500 stamps valued at ₹25,000 that were fraudulently used in registry causing a revenue loss of ₹1.25 crore to the state exchequer. Proper investigation of past three years’ stamps of value ₹5,000 and above could expose a bigger scam in the state, said officials.
The scam was exposed after a sub-registrar office found a few stamps of value ₹25,000 suspicious and a case was registered at the Civil Lines police station in September last year on the direction of district magistrate Deepak Meena.
Assistant inspector general (stamps) Gyanendra Kumar said that the matter was immediately reported to IG (stamps) in Lucknow who directed all sub- registrar offices across UP to examine stamps of value ₹5000 and above of previous three years.
Kumar said all six sub-registrar offices in the district were directed to carry out the checking, and in the past six months, more than 500 stamps valued at ₹25,000 were found fraudulently used for registry.
The fake stamps were used by a single deed writer of Meerut and most of these were used in the office of two sub-registrars. Senior officials of the department didn’t deny the possibility of connivance of staff in it.
An official in the treasury explained that the stamps depot is in Kanpur and lot of stamps were received from there while many stamps of particular serial numbers were sent to treasuries of other districts of the division.
The fraudulently used stamps were of three types - stamps with particular serial numbers allotted in 2013 were used in registries of 2023 with changed name, date and other details on back side of the stamps. Secondly, stamps allotted to treasuries of other districts were used in Meerut and in the third category, stamps of a particular serial number never came to Meerut treasury but were used in Meerut.
District magistrate Deepak Meena held a meeting with AIG Kumar and chief treasury officer on January 1 and directed them for thorough checking of stamps and register cases against the wrongdoers.
Kumar, however, admitted that registering cases against 500 people was a Herculean task as his sub-registrar waited three days to get FIR registered in two cases in September. “The FIR was lodged only after the intervention of district magistrate,” he said, adding that no investigation was carried out in the case in the past five months.
Sub-registrar offices were now sending notices of “short stamp duty” to those in whose registry these fake stamps were used and directing them to deposit the required amount.
