Man held for using forged ID card to travel in ST buses for free

Navi Mumbai: The police has arrested a 35-year-old man from Indapur, currently unemployed and preparing for competitive exams, for using a forged ID card for travelling in the state transport buses

Navi Mumbai: The police has arrested a 35-year-old man from Indapur, currently unemployed and preparing for competitive exams, for using a forged ID card for travelling in the state transport buses. According to the police, two months ago his cousin, who is a conductor at state transport, was admitted to a hospital when the accused flicked his ID card and took a coloured photocopy of the card to commute to different cities to appear for his job hunt.

A View of ST buses in Mumbai (Bhushan Koyande/HT)

The arrested accused has been identified as Santosh Balu Jadhav (35), a resident of Indapur. He was caught after vigilance officer of the state transport department Shivnath Pakhare checked the passengers alighting before Kharpada toll naka at Panvel.

When Jadhav got down from the bus that started from Panvel bus depot, he asked Jadhav to show the ticket to which he showed an Identity Card of a state transport employee named Sachin Yuvraj Jadhav. Pakhare asked him to produce more proof of he being an employee to which he showed a salary slip.

“The salary slip data and identity card data did not match and hence he started probing more following which the accused fled from the spot. The officer nabbed him and handed him to us,” senior police inspector Ravindra Daundkar from Panvel Taluka police station said.

Upon further interrogation, it was found that the accused has a cousin brother working with the state transport department as a conductor in Indapur and was hospitalised two months back. “The accused flicked the identity card then and made a coloured photocopy of the same. There was no stamp of ‘colour xerox’ on the coloured photocopy and hence we would be interrogating the owner of the photocopy shop at Indapur as well,” Daundkar said.

For the last two months, the accused had been travelling across various cities to look for jobs using the forged identity card. The accused has been arrested for cheating and forgery and is under police custody till Saturday.