Uttarakhand minister’s aide, PWD official booked for ‘forgery’

DEHRADUN: The private secretary of public works department (PWD) minister Satpal Maharaj and a PWD chief engineer have been booked for fraud and criminal conspiracy for allegedly forging official documents from Maharaj’s office and using his digital signature to approve the chief engineer, Ayaz Ahmad’s promotion as PWD’s head of the department (HoD).

A case was registered in Dehradun’s Dalanwala police station on the complaint of Maharaj’s public relations officer late night on Wednesday. Based on the complaint, the minister’s secretary, IP Singh and Ahmad were booked on charges of “cheating by impersonation, forgery of a valuable security or authority to make a transfer of any valuable security, forging documents of an electronic record for cheating, fraudulently using as genuine any document or electronic record after it is forged and being party to a criminal conspiracy, under sections 419, 467, 468, 471 and 120(b) of the IPC respectively, along with sections 72 and 72 of the IT Act.”

One of the police officers privy to the case details, told TOI that as per the complaint, the incident happened on May 15. “The complaint alleged that minister Maharaj had received the online application of Ahmad’s promotion as the PWD HoD on May 5. It was to be approved by him and then to be forwarded to the CM for sanction. However, as the minister was on a foreign tour, the application was pending for approval,” he said.

Inspector Nand Kishor Bhatt, station house officer, Dalanwala, who is probing the case, said, “After registering the case, a probe is underway in the matter.”