After arresting the mastermind behind fake insurance claim racket from Kalyan, the cops are now on the lookout for insurance employees who helped the fraudster clear the claims. The accused Chandrakant Shinde, along with two doctors from Mumbra and a TMC employee was arrested by Kalyan cops in the case recently.
On January 27, the Kalyan crime branch unit-3 arrested Shinde, 65 a resident of Kalyan, Dr Abdul Moin Siddiqui, 39 and Dr Imran Siddiqui, 41 from Mumbra, TMC (Thane municipal corporation) sweeper Tejpal Mehrol from Mumbra crematorium. They were booked for producing fake death certificates of insurance policyholders and claiming amount to the tune of Rs 81 lakhs. The policyholders are also from Andhra Pradesh.
"Chandrakant's nephew Vivek from Thane went to claim his insurance policy from a private insurer in Decembre 2018. There he learned that his policy worth Rs 4.08 lakhs were already claimed by submitting a forged death certificate by Chandrakant," said API Santosh Shevale, Kalyan crime branch.
"During a routine conversation, Vivek had told Chandrakant's son Narayan about his various insurance policies. Some of them were to mature and when Chandrakant got to know about this, he quietly went and forged Vivek's death certificate with the help of the above doctors, and got the claim passed," he says.
Upon knowing this Vivek approached the cops who investigated the matter and caught Chandrakant and the above accused. "Without the involvement of insurance officials, it is not possible to get the claims passed so quickly. So we are now seeking details of company employees from the insurance companies," he says. "In fact, he had also filed a claim of Rs 55 lakhs when our inquiry started," he adds.
Chandrakant sold cutlery items in local trains and in 2015 met Tejpal Mehrol. At that time one of his relatives in Andhra Pradesh had died and the family was having a difficult time claiming his insurance as they did not have the deceased's death certificate. He confided in Mehrol who told him that he could easily get it arranged for an amount. Mehrol knew the above doctors who took money to give the fake death certificate. He would use the doctor's certificate to get a death certificate from the TMC and the insurance claim was cleared.
Encouraged by this Chandrakant got his own policy cleared by submitting a fake death certificate, his son Narayan and daughter-in-law Laxmi's as well. "In fact, he also claimed his wife's policy who is alive and says she knows nothing about it," says Shevale. The cops have also arrested Narayan and Laxmi and all six of them have been remanded to police custody.
BANNED DOCTOR
Dr Abdul Moin Siddiqui who is a BUMS (Unani) doctor was banned by TMC since 2008 along with three others in Mumbra. "He would stand outside crematoriums and issue fake doctor's certificate to the deceased's relative so that they could submit it for death certificate with the TMC," says Dr Ram Kendre, head of TMC's health department. "The matter came to light when we found over 70-100 death certificates issued by him in a month repeatedly. We will ensure that his license gets cancelled," says Kendre.
