Pramesh S Jain & Yogesh K Porwar
T
he Central Crime Branch officials on Monday busted old age pension scheme racket and arrested a 36-year-old tout for creating a fake documents to facilitate bogus beneficiaries to avail the benifits.
The accused Chatur KS,a PU drop out from Shimoga operating from a office in Rajajinagar for over the last one year helped over 200 fake beneficiaries to avail the monthly pension schemes .
The accused was charging people a price ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 and succeded it getting the approvals, before he was busted .
Based on a tip off,a team of CCB officials raided his offices situated two in Rajajinagar and one in Kengeri.
The police recovered laptops,computers,hardisks and 205 applications documents which the accused was handling.
However his associate identified as Mannur Nagaraju, managed to escape and efforts are on to track him down,Dr.SD Sharanappa,Joint commissioner of Police , headed the operation, said .
Explaining the Modus Operandi,Mr.Sharanappa said that the accused was using Easy PDF Editor software to download Aadhar and manipulate the date of birth of the applicants .
He would then print the fabricated Aadhar copies and submit it to the revenue officers concerned along with the other required documents including bank details and BPL cards with tampered details to apply for the old age pension scheme.
As per the primary requirement of the old age scheme the applicant must be a senior citizen with 60 and above years.
However the accused would manipulate the date of birth for the candidates who are aged 40,48 and even 30 years old,the probe revealed .
The CCB is now verifying the role of the revenue officials and village account concerned as they have not done the verification and due diligence while approving the applications.
The CCB officials are now issuing notices to the revenue officials concerned for questioning and to ascertain their roles.
The accused would fabricate the Aadhar details superficially and a simple verification by the officials could have exposed the racket ,much before.
However the officials have not carried the background verification which led to suspect their role,a senior officer part of the investigation, said .
The accused has been booked under various sections of IT act and also under section 420 (cheating)and 465 ( forgery) .
The accused have incurred huge losses to the state exchaquer and also deprived the rights of genuine beneficiaries .
The police are also gathering the details of the bogus beneficiaries for further investigations.
Apart from this racket,the accused is also helping people to get government schemes including DL,Ration card and government documents for the people which are also being verified .
