JOIN USAn agent with a private finance company has been detained by police in connection with a “fake” clearance certificate issued to rape accused cab driver Shiv Kumar Yadav.
The cabbie had submitted the certificate to a road transport corporation office to obtain an All India Tourist permit.
Senior police officers said the agent has however claimed that a third person provided him the certificate. That person is yet to be unidentified, but police said they have launched a search for him.
“The arrest of that unidentified person will reveal if there was an individual procuring these fake certificates or there was an entire racket operating in a systematic manner. We will also know how they managed to forge signatures of senior police officers,” an officer involved in investigations told Deccan Herald.
Yadav had bought the Swift Dzire car, in which the alleged rape took place, in May this year on obtaining a loan from a finance company. Police said the company was initially reluctant to sanction the loan and wanted to know how he would return the money.
He was told by a company agent that if he procured a tourist permit from the transport unit, it would help in obtaining the loan as he would have a source of income by plying the car. But the transport unit required a character certificate from police and a fake one was allegedly procured by the agent through his “contact”.
The officer said the agent has revealed that apart from obtaining the clearance certificate, he also helped him get the tourist permit from the transport unit.
The Burari transport unit, from where the certificate was issued, will be asked to provide the file containing documents pertaining to Yadav’s permit so that connivance, if any, by transport officials can be detected.
The alleged fake certificate was issued in the name of south-east Delhi’s Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police. Senior officers had immediately dismissed the signature on the certificate as forged.
Meanwhile, an NRI woman, who on Tuesday revealed that she had received stares from Yadav while travelling in his cab last month, has responded to police through email.
The US-based woman, Nidhi Shah, had been approached by police through Twitter soon after she made the revelations on the social networking platform. Police had wanted her to come forward and file a complaint. She had alleged that she had complained to Yadav’s employer Uber, but they had not responded.
Police sources said Shah finally responded to police on Thursday with a few questions related to the legality of the issue. “We are in the process of replying to her and she is likely to file her FIR through email soon,” an officer said.