Union ministry files forgery case against B'lore firm

The Union New and Renewable Energy Ministry has approached the Delhi Police cyber cell on Thursday to investigate a Bangalore-based `commission’ for claiming to be part of the government and cheating people.

Girish Kumar, director (administration), filed a complaint with the cyber cell at the economic offences wing of Delhi Police, stating that they recently found the fake commission on the internet, which mentioned that it is part of the government and runs renewable energy programmes across the country.

Kumar asked police to investigate body which says on its website that it is based in Bangalore. “It has been noticed that a website is operational in the name of the National Energy Commission, showing it is as a Government of India (GoI) body, set up at Hosahalli in Bangalore,” Kumar said in the complaint.

“The Commission claims to be responsible for formulating policies, and programmes necessary for popularising application of various non-conventional and renewable sources of energy in the country,” Kumar said.

He said the website claims to “implement various projects concerning utilisation of solar energy, biogas, micro-hydel and biomass energy”.

Refuting all the claims made by the `commission’, Kumar said, “This ministry, being the nodal ministry for all renewable energy programmes and activities in India, is not aware of any such Commission set up by the GoI or any state government. We have doubts that this may a bogus entity, including doing fraudulent activities as seen on the website.

They are inviting applications for a number of jobs, including 45 public relation officers.”
He said the job applications have been invited online.

“Having no postal address, it strengthens our doubts about the genuineness of this entity. This Commission is conducting exams too and receiving payments,” said Kumar.

The ministry officials say they have downloaded certain documents from the website and found them to be fake.

After verifying the documents provided by the ministry, police have registered a case under Section 420 (forgery) and 511 (attempting to commit offences) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 66 (cause wrongful loss or damage to public or any person destroys information in a computer resource) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

“No arrest has been made so far and we are investigating the matter,” said a police officer.