Pune: FIR against job aspirant 4 years after SRPF’s plaint

PUNE: The Wanowrie police on Tuesday registered a case of cheating and forgery against a man from Ahmednagar and his accomplice, almost four years after the State Reserve Police Force (SRPF), Group-II, had furnished a complaint application against him for submitting a bogus medical certificate during a recruitment drive in 2017.
The case was filed only after the Pune divisional commissioner’s office last year raised a query with the police if a chargesheet had been filed in the matter, in response to the man’s representation seeking a pardon for his mistake and giving him the police job.
Mangesh Shinde, the commandant of SRPF Group-II, told TOI, “During the final phase of the recruitment drive in 2017, the SRPF authorities had asked the man to undergo a medical test at the state-run Sassoon General Hospital and furnish a medical report. The man did not go to the hospital and, instead, got a forged medical report done by an accomplice before submitting the same with the SRPF authorities.”
Shinde said, “The forgery came to notice during the scrutiny of documents and the SRPF had then filed a complaint application with the Wanowrie police. The plea was since pending action and it was only after the divisional commissioner’s query that the police re-verified the matter and decided to register an FIR for cheating and forgery.”
He said, “The police had earlier merged our complaint application with another case (related to SRPF recruitment scam) though the incident was different. We again pursued the matter with the Wanowrie police. In the second week of June this year, we again filed an application to take action against the recruitment candidate. The police then finally registered our FIR.”
The police said, “The SRPF had then sent a letter to the hospital for verifying the medical certificate. The hospital replied that the certificate was not genuine. The SRPF again referred the man to the hospital and got his medical examination conducted. This time, he cleared the examination but the SRPF decided not to recruit him because he had submitted a forged certificate.”
The police said, “During a preliminary inquiry conducted by the Wanowrie police in 2017, the youth had admitted that what he had done was wrong. He later made a representation to the Pune divisional commissioner and other forums that he should be recruited because he had qualified in the medical examination and his name was kept in the waiting list. The divisional commissioner’s office had raised a query if a chargesheet was filed in the case.”
Senior inspector Deepak Lagad of the Wanowrie police said, “The police officer then handling the matter kept the inquiry pending for a very long time and did not register an FIR. Now, we realised that the officer had made a mistake. We took a fresh complaint application from the SRPF, conducted preliminary inquiry based on the documents given by them and registered an FIR. I have submitted a report to my superior to initiate departmental action against the officer.”