STF busts major racket in postal dept, arrests 13

A major racket involving postal employees and officials allegedly forging educational documents to recruit aspirants to the posts of gramin dak sewak in the postal department was unearthed in Aligarh, UP Special Task Force (STF) said on Tuesday.

The racketeers, who took ₹4 to ₹5 lakh from each aspirant, provided the latter forged educational marksheets that carried the names of Meerut’s Subharti University, Rajasthan’s Vidhyapeeth University and Bihar Siksha Board, officials said.

On Monday, five members of the gang that runs the racket and eight aspirants were arrested in Aligarh, STF said in a note to media.

The gang members arrested were Sajid Ali, the kingpin, Vikal Yadav, a postman in Mainpuri, Mohd Saqib, Mohd Suhail and Aham Mishra.

A senior STF official said Vikal, who was attached as the driver of the Mainpuri postal superintendent, had confessed to working with and paying the postal superintendent of Aligarh, Sanjay Kumar Singh, to forge the documents. He got in touch with the Aligarh official through former Mainpuri postal superintendent Devendra Kumar Singh, who was presently posted in the same post in Jhansi.

Singh allegedly took ₹1 lakh to verify the forged documents of each candidate. The remaining amount was shared by other members of the corterie.

The official said the claims of Vikal Yadav would be further verified and legal action initiated against the postal employees if their involvement in the job racket was confirmed.

Out of the 44,228 gramin dak sewaks to be recruited across India, 4,588 posts are reserved for UP and selection is done on the basis of marks obtained in the class 10 exam.

A case against the incident was lodged in Aligarh’s Civil Lines police station.