Gang making bogus bail bonds busted

Cops seek names of beneficiaries from court

Chandigarh, October 29
The crime branch of the city police has busted a well-organised gang involved in generating bogus bail bonds for criminals at the Sector 17 District Courts. An alleged key operator of the gang, Manoj Kumar, was arrested by the police yesterday.

This is the second such gang involved in making fake documents for bails that has been busted in the last four months.

Investigations carried out so far reveal that the list of beneficiaries include some hardcore criminals. Based on the interrogation of the suspects, the police has requested the court authorities to provide it with details of the beneficiaries.

The main suspect in the case, Manoj Kumar, a resident of Mundate village in Muzaffarnagar district (UP), was arrested from Sector 17 on Friday.

Another accused, Hardit, alias Balbir Singh, is absconding. The police has also recovered fake documents, including identity card and salary slips of Punjab Government which were used for filing bail sureties.

Another member of the gang, Sachin Kumar, a resident of Burail, is already in the custody of the police since October 25.

In a similar case, Virender Singh, a tainted Junior Engineer (JE) of the Punjab irrigation department was arrested in June. Virender and his associates used to file sureties. He had reportedly filed sureties for over 100 criminals and most of them were granted regular bail against their criminal cases.

The police has also filed a detailed chargesheet against Virender Singh in the district courts. Police sources said a reply to the request of the police seeking details of beneficiaries under trial and pertaining to fake documents furnished by Virender Singh was still pending in court.

Crime branch Sub-Inspector Sohan Lal, who is the investigating officer in the case, said they got a tip-off about the gang operating in the district courts during investigation of the gang involving Virender Singh. “The investigations have revealed that the gang was operating in the court for a long time,” he said.

A case under various sections of the IPC has been registered against Manoj and Hardit at the Sector 17 police station.