Court clerk held for issuing forged heirship certificates

A Panvel court clerk, Deepak Mohan Phad, was arrested for forging magistrate signatures to issue fake heirship certificates and court fee challans since 2019.

NAVI MUMBAI: A clerk attached with the Panvel district court has been accused of forging signatures of court magistrates to get false heirship certificates and fake court fee challans issued, to applicants of heirship certificates.

Court clerk held for issuing forged heirship certificates

The accused, identified as Deepak Mohan Phad, 32, who was allegedly doing this from 2019, was arrested last week. Two FIRs were registered with the Panvel City police on November 4 and December 23 respectively, with regard to the case.

The first FIR was registered against “unidentified” accused by the superintendent of the civil court senior division, Sanchita Santhosh Gharat. During police investigation, it was found that the clerk was allegedly the culprit, and he was arrested on Sunday.

With the accused now identified, the second FIR was registered by assistant superintendent, Civil Court, Pravin Dhairyarao Bandivadekar. Both the cases were registered under section 336 S (forgery), 337 (forgery of record of court), 338 (forgery of valuable security, will), 339 (possession of documents that are forged), 341 (counterfeit seal or instrument) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

Preliminary investigation by the police revealed that the accused had forged the order copies of heirship certificates and had created fake court fee challans.

The matter came to light after the filing of an application by an advocate with the court, to obtain a certified copy of heirship certificate. Court officials found that even as the heirship case was still pending in the court, a fake certificate, bearing forged signatures of the court officers as well as the civil judge, was created. It was also detected that details pertaining to the case, that were available online, were deleted.

Thereafter, on more probing, issuing of fake court fee challans in nine cases of heirship certificate application, amounting to ₹3.91 lakh, also came to the surface. As per the internal investigation conducted by the court, the accused had been taking applicants of heirship certificates for a ride by claiming to have paid the due court fees.

“Court fees were not paid. Instead, these were embezzled by the accused, who issued fake challans. It is suspected that there would be more cases of fake challans since the scam was going on since 2019. The matter is under investigation,” said a police officer.