Man foxes PSUs with fake PMO fax, held

NEW DELHI: An MBA graduate, who owned an NGO, was arrested on Monday for duping PSUs into sponsoring his organization’s events by sending them forged faxes on behalf of PMO and BJP office.
Yashpal Singh Tomar, 50, ran an NGO, Global Need Foundation, at Shahdara in northeast Delhi. He used to manipulate the settings of his office machine which made the faxes appear as if they were sent from the PMO and the office of BJP president Amit Shah.These faxes were then sent to the heads of PSUs like ONGC, Oil India Limited and NTPC recommending sponsorship. More often, the sponsorships were sanctioned.
After sending the letter, Tomar used to change the configuration of the machine back to normal and destroy the letters having forged endorsements.
His fraud came to the fore after one of the PSUs suspected foul play and cross-checked the fax with the PMO. The police received a complaint from NTPC Limited stating that its office got a fax from an NGO requesting corporate sponsorship of Rs 1,50,000 for the award ceremony of “National Talent Competition” scheduled for February 13 at Indraprastha, New Delhi. The NTPC subsequently informed the crime branch after verifying facts with the PMO. “Once the office denied having sent any such fax, the crime branch was roped in to track the conman. Tomar was arrested by a team led by ACP K P S Malhotra. He is being interrogated for the exact number of PSUs he had duped to get sponsors,” joint CP, crime, Ravindra Yadav, said.

“A team led by DCP Bhisham Singh was formed to crack the case. During investigation, it was revealed that ONGC in Mumbai and Oil India Limited in Noida received similar letters through fax. Tomar confessed to the crime saying he had manipulated the details of the sender in the fax machine,” additional CP, crime, Ashok Chand, said.
He said he resorted to the crime because his NGO faced a shortage of funds. He realized that he would get an easy sponsorship if the faxes were shown to be sent from the PMO.
Tomar had started “Rajiv Gandhi National Talent Competition” in 2005. His NGO used to organize various competitions, many of which were held in Delhi, Tripura, Assam, West Bengal and Jharkhand till 2013.
The fax machine, a laptop and other incriminating documents have been recovered. Further investigation is underway.