Police crack down on recruitment firms

Police claim to be cracking down on agencies that provide housekeeping and other service staff without verifying their antecedents. Puja Changoiwala reports.

Police claim to be cracking down on agencies that provide housekeeping and other service staff without verifying their antecedents. This comes in the wake of several crimes committed by domestic help who had been deputed by agencies that did not run adequate background checks on these persons.

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The man who allegedly killed Wadala girl Pallavi Purkayastha in August had secured a job despite providing vague details. In July, Powai police arrested the owner of a recruitment agency for not verifying the antecedents of a person before appointing him as a caretaker at a businesswoman's house at Hiranandani Gardens.

After working for four days at Sushma Khemka's home, the caretaker who had provided a fake name, fled with a gold chain worth Rs 51,000.

After Khemka complained to the police, Bimal Mehta, who runs Human Helping Hands in Lower Parel, was arrested. Investigation revealed that the caretaker had submitted fake documents to secure the job. "The photocopy of the PAN card and the driving licence that the accused had submitted to the agency belonged to one Tushar Landge. The accused had stolen the documents during his brief stay with Landge," said police inspector Yaqoob Mulla.

Police learnt that Mehta, the agency owner, was a school dropout and would never verify the antecedents and certificates of the persons who were placed through his agency as domestic help, caretakers, security guards or drivers.

"Shockingly, there are agencies that do not even know the procedure to be followed to start a job recruitment agency," Mulla said.