Illegal driving license racket involving J&K residents busted by Ahmedabad Police

Ahmedabad, June 17 (IANS) The Ahmedabad City Crime Branch officials have busted a gang which issued fraudulent driving licenses, using addresses of Indian security forces battalions, to residents of Jammu and Kashmir.

Acting on a tip-off from the Military Intelligence Ahmedabad, Pune Branch, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Crime Branch, discovered that agents operating within Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar RTOs had connections with individuals from Jammu and Kashmir. These agents were reportedly fabricating driving licenses by submitting falsified documents to the RTO office.

On receiving this information, the police inspector M.S. Trivedi of the crime branch spearheaded a private investigation. Legal action has since been initiated against the accused individuals, Santosh Singh Madhavsingh Chauhan and Dhaval Vasantakumar Rawat.

Chauhan was working as an RTO agent in Gandhinagar in 2015. It was here he started fabricating driving licenses for various Indian security force personnel. His connections in Jammu and Kashmir, who weren't employed by any Indian security forces, would supply him with the necessary identification details. These details were then used to create fraudulent documentation, which were uploaded to the RTO website to obtain the driving licenses.

Rawat, who worked with Chauhan for two years, was also implicated in the scam. He was privy to Chauhan's tactics and started operating on a similar modus operandi, colluding with a contact in Jammu and Kashmir. He digitally created false documents, uploaded them to the RTO site, and received driving licenses bypassing the usual verification process.

The duo has been implicated in creating over a thousand illegitimate licenses, charging between Rs 6000 and Rs 8000 per license. They would accept payments through digital platforms like Google Pay. Both the accused are currently in custody as the investigation continues.

The accused, Dhaval Vasantkumar Rawat, collaborated with Santosh Singh Chauhan for two years and gained intimate knowledge of the fraudulent driving license operation, from which Chauhan was earning a significant income. Rawat was involved in distributing these false licenses, often dispatching them to the addresses of security force battalions, under the direction of Ayan Umar, a co-conspirator based in Kashmir.

Umar would provide Rawat with the Aadhaar card and photograph of the individual for whom the driving license was intended. Subsequently, Rawat would digitally create a series of documents on his laptop - including a service certificate, defense motor driving license book, confirmation letter, and an Army canteen card.