The Mumbai police crime branch arrested nine persons, including three advocates for allegedly using duplicate and forged stamp papers in a bid to make bogus property related documents.
Around five months ago, an informer tipped off the property cell about a gang, including advocates who had been selling duplicate and forged stamp papers outside the Esplanade court near CST, Bandra magistrate’s court in Bandra (east) and Andheri magistrate’s court in Andheri (east).
A special team within the property cell learnt that the gang members would be coming to the respective courts on March 3. Accordingly, four teams of officials and informers were formed and the accused were arrested from the three courts.
Among the nine arrested, the advocates includes Rajbahadur Parasnath Yadav (45) a resident of Jain nagar, Service road in Khar (east) who operated at the Bandra court, Vimalchandra Dvivedi, a resident of Nalasopara operated from Esplanade court and Vivek Premsagar Pandey (30) a resident of Naigaon, Thane who operated from the Andheri court.
Speaking about the case, DCP, detection, Dhananjay Kulkarni said, “We have seized 15,500 stamp papers from them and we strongly suspect about 300 of them to be duplicate or forged. The 300 stamp papers are collectively worth Rs 7.01 lakh approximately.” When asked if they have already misused many such paper stamps and made a lot of money Mr Kulkarni said that investigation is underway to find it out.
ACP, crime branch, Padmakar Chavan said, “They either forged a stamp paper or used old genuine stamp paper. We have found stamp paper dating back to 1967, 1995, 2003, 2012, 2015. They make the sale deed and pretend as if the sale deed was made several years ago. They would do it intending to make fake property documents. They sell the forged documents for anywhere between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 or more depending on what document is being made.”
An FIR has been registered against them under relevant sections of the IPC for forgery, sale of counterfeit government stamp, possessing counterfeit government stamp and using it as genuine. The accused have been sent to custody for further probe.
