One-crore postal racket busted

By Prashant Pandey

NEW DELHI, MAY 12. A gang of four engaged in selling forged or stolen ``Kisan Vikas Patras'' in the open market for the past seven months has been busted by the Delhi police. The four have been arrested and KVPs worth over Rs. 50 lakhs recovered from them. Investigations have revealed that the gang so far had done business worth a crore.

The police got a tip-off that Dayanand, a dismissed conductor of Delhi Transport Corporation living in the Capital's Rohini area, was selling KVPs at a discount. A decoy customer was sent out to fix a deal for purchase of KVPs at 25 per cent of the cost. Dayanand and his accomplices were arrested on Friday evening when they turned up to seal the deal on Sultanpuri-Auchandi Road near Kanjhawla village. The three co-accused have been identified as Anupam, Sudhir and Ravinder.

KVPs can be bought only at post offices. This gang had seals of as many as 22 post offices across North India including Alwar, Ambala, Jalandhar, Jammu Cantonment, Chandigarh, Bareilly, Ludhiana, Jaipur and Ferozpur Cantonment.

The police are also on the look-out for the gang's contact man, identified as Vinod. ``The accused have no idea of the antecedents or whereabouts of Vinod, who used to bring them the KVPs after fixing the deals,'' the Deputy Commissioner of Police (North-West), Mr. R.P. Upadhyaya, said on Saturday. A special team has been deployed to nab Vinod.

The police have also informed the Post and Telegraph Department of the recovery and asked it to examine whether the KVPs are fake or siphoned off from genuine post offices. ``We have sent them the serial numbers of the KVPs and are awaiting confirmation,'' Mr. Upadhyaya said. The P&T Department has a system of circulating letters within the Department about KVPs that go missing to stop anyone from encashing it.

The police also suspect involvement of some persons from the P&T Department in the racket. ``If the KVPs turn out to be real, it will be difficult to believe that no insider was involved,'' says Mr. Upadhyaya.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Other States
Previous : For the hero, being bad is good now...
Next     : Heat wave toll rises to 5