In what can be seen as a major breakthrough in cracking fraud cases, Jammu and Kashmir Police Crime Branch has registered five cases against 16 people for their alleged involvement in multi-crore job, visa, and document frauds and siphoning off large amounts of government funds. The fraudsters also include government officials.
The accused include top executives of a Chandigarh-based company, some officials of the J-K government, and a lawyer, who swindled more than 50 people, the officer said. The FIRs were filed at the Crime Branch (Economic Offences Wing) Police Station. One of the cases involved top executives of Chandigarh-based Messrs Saphire, including its owner, Jass Bajwa.
The police action came on a complaint by Samba resident Prem Nath, who claimed that he was duped of Rs 17.09 lakh in a visa fraud by the firm’s employees, Senior Superintendent of Police, Crime Jammu, Benam Tosh said. The company’s manager, Yuvraj Singh Sandhu, its counsellor, Gagan, refund-in-charge, Devinder Singh, and authorised signatory, Shalika, were also named in the FIR, the officials said.
In a major job scam, Tosh said, a case was registered against Choudhary Mushtaq, a resident of Rajouri, for allegedly duping 41 people of Rs 1.43 crore on the pretext of providing them jobs in the Territorial Army and handing them fake appointment orders.
Samba residents Hem Raj and Kavya Nayyar were booked for swindling Avinash Singh of the Bhaderwah area of Doda of Rs 18.55 lakh with a false promise of a job as a manager in Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board, Katra, the Police officer said.Several officials of Jammu Power Development Corporation Limited in Ramban’s Batote were booked for forging an executive engineer’s signature after his retirement and withdrawing large amounts of funds from the government body, Tosh said.
The action came at the direction of a court on the application of retired executive engineer Shakti Singh. An FIR was registered against three people, one of them a lawyer, at the complaint of Nasir Ali of Poonch, who alleged they forged an affidavit in a compensation case, the SSP said.
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