Margao Municipal Council is facing yet another case of forgery and is now preparing to refer the case to the police for a thorough investigation. Surprisingly the forgery was exposed through a non-availability certificate attached to an order pronounced by the Judicial Magistrate First Class.
The JMFC order was directing the MMC chief officer to register the birth of a person purportedly born in 1966 and a non availability certificate purportedly signed by the Sub-Registrar of Births and Death.
However, on perusal of the non-availability certificate the chief officer found it to be a forged document. The signature of sub registrar on the non-availability certificate is forged.
That it is a forged certificate is further established as the seal on the non-availability certificate is not the seal used by the Sub-Registrar but appears to be a false seal.
The non-availability certificate was issued with reference to the birth of one Bharati Govind Shirodkar who was reportedly born on 6th November 1966. The Sub-Registrar’s office has certificates since 1971 only and as the earlier certificates are not available the non availability certificate is issued.
MMC former chairperson Savio Coutinho who had even complained to the Chief Registrar of Births and Deaths about the forgery last year, lamented that nothing much came about on his complaint.
“What I fail to understand is why the officials whose signature is forged, is not lodging a police complaint against the offender,” he said.
Present Chief Officer Johnson Fernandes is determined to refer the matter to the police so that the person forging the documents is apprehended. “In fact the person forging certificates should have been charge sheeted in the earlier case in the past,” he said.
It may be recalled that in September 2017 MMC had got embroiled in a forgery case wherein one Renuka Tashildar had changed her name to Rita Fernandes in order to obtain Portuguese nationality.
Apparently the person responsible for the forgery in Renuka’s case was only suspended for about two months and was reinstated in service even though the Director of Municipal Administration had asked MMC to file a police case against the guilty person.
It is learnt that MMC constituted its own internal committee for the enquiry and the committee gave the accused person a clean chit and he was reinstated in service.
Renuka had reportedly bribed an official from the Road Transport Office to issue her a driving license in the name of Rita Fernandes and also got the landlords of the house she was living in named as her parents in the forged birth certificate.
According to Savio there are two other fraudulently issued birth certificates. Imtiyaz Anwar Sayed was issued a birth certificate on 11th November 2014 stating that he was born in Margao on 11th December 1996 when in reality he was born in Halliyal Karnataka and his birth is registered there too.
In the second case one Nirshat Khan was issued a birth certificate on 28th November 2014 stating that she was born on 6th January 1977 when in reality the Passport officer informed that a passport is already issued to a person with the same details residing in Belgaum and the Sub-Registrar at Margao did not even reply to the passport officer.
