CUDDALORE:
A racket in fake government seals and rubber stamps has come to light with the arrest of two persons. The two, based in Vriddhachalam have reportedly been operating the racket for some time now and its ramifications are yet to be fully ascertained.
The fraudsters have been producing false government seals and rubber stamps identical to the ones being used by the Village Administrative Officers, Deputy Registrar's office, Tahsildars and so on. A total of 37 such forged seals have been recovered from them and it is learnt that they have helped many farmers to get loans from nationalised banks and cooperative banks. Even the duplicate stamps and seals of VAOs in Ariyalur district too have formed part of the recovery.
After the seizure of the seals, District Collector P.Seetharaman told The Hindu that during the bankers' meet held in November 2009, State Bank of India had brought to his notice that certain duplicate documents were being attached to the farm loan applications and therefore these could not be considered. However, the bank was hesitant to file a police complaint. Hence, the Collector alerted the Superintendent of Police Ashwin Kotnis, who formed a team to investigate. The team swooped on S.Ranganathan (42) of Dharmanallur in Khammapuram block in Cuddalore and D.Senthil (40) of Nagapandal in Perambalur district. Inspector Rathinavel said that the culprits used to forge the documents as required by the beneficiaries, — in the case of big landlords owning 50 acres of land they would prepare documents for five acres to enable them to obtain bank loans and vice-versa. For the services rendered they used to charge a commission ranging from Rs 2,000 to Rs 10,000, depending upon the size of the loan. Mr. Rathinavel said that Section 420 (cheating) of Indian Penal Code had been slapped on them. The Collector said that he had written to the Registrar's office to keep a tab on all the documents. He had also directed the officials to bring seals and stamps for verification. Meanwhile, Mr Seetharaman suggested replacement of rubber seals with the ones made of brass. He said that there was no need to panic because the false seals were not deeply engraved and from the very look its duplicity could be made out.
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