Gang selling fake court documents busted

Fraudsters would pose as lawyers and court officials with ‘connections’ to judges

ISLAMABAD: Police have managed to bust a gang of fraudsters who forged documents of the Supreme Court, Islamabad High Court and sessions court to dupe unsuspecting litigants.



The suspects—identified as Israr Ahmed, Shafiqur Rehman, Abrar Hussain Shah and Muhammad Shakeel – were remanded into police custody for two days by a judicial magistrate on Saturday.

Police told The Express Tribune that the suspects would allegedly approach litigants and inmates’ families, offering to help them speed up their cases by utilizsng their “connections” with lawyers and judges.

A few weeks ago, Ahmed had allegedly approached a man whose son was in jail for a murder case and offered to help secure a release.

Repeating his oft repeated and fine-tuned pitch, Ahmed told the man that he had connections with the judge and lawyers, but that the task would cost money. Relieved to hear of a possibility of having his loved one released from jail, the father of the detained man agreed to pay him Rs650,000.



After taking their money, Ahmed allegedly handed the man a power of attorney and other documents which looked like legal orders. Ecstatic that he would soon be reunited with his son, the man took the documents to the relevant officials to secure the release of his son. But he was turned away with officials stating that the documents he possessed were fake.

Devastated, the man moved the court against Ahmed.

Consequently, an order was passed and the court told the Margalla police to register a case against the suspect.

During investigation, police discovered that a gang of ‘legal document vendors’ was working in and around the courts of the capital. One of the suspects, Abrar Hussain Shah, would falsely claim to be a reader in the court of Islamabad High Court Judge Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, while another posed as a lawyer.

Police finally managed to apprehend the four members of the gang including Ahmed, Rehman, Hussain and Shakeel.

On Saturday, when the suspects were produced before Judicial Magistrate Jawad Hussain Adil, the police claimed that they had also confiscated forged documents and associated equipment from the suspects’ possession. They claimed that the suspects were also involved in other cases of a similar nature.



Police, however, said they had yet to recover the money the four men had swindled out of the complainant. They requested the court to extend the suspects’ remand into physical custody for five days. The court, however, extended the remand for two more days and ordered the police to produce them again on November 7. In its order, the court observed that this is a case of a heinous nature since documents of the SC, high court and district courts had been forged.

“The Investigation officer is directed to thoroughly probe the matter and be very cautious when making recoveries,” the court observed in Saturday’s order.

Meanwhile, Islamabad Bar Association (IBA) Secretary General Zafar Khokhar told The Express Tribune that the suspects usually strike an out-of-court deal with the complainant and are likely to get off the hook. However, he said the bar had now become a party to the case.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2016.