In a shocker that has emerged from Etah district of Uttar Pradesh, a woman named Mohseena (also spelt Mohsina) pulled off a fraud on the pension system of the Revenue department from where her father had retired as a clerk. The father died on January 2, 2013, and the pension should have ideally stopped as the wife of the deceased man was not alive.
Knowing fully well that as per government service and pension rules, Mohseena decided to pose as Sabia Behum her mother whose death preceded that of her father.
The then 25-year-old Mohsina knew that the spouse of a deceased government employee is entitled to a spousal pension which is a slightly lower amount than what the retired employee draws while alive.
She created forged documents to pose as the deceased Wajahat Ullah’s wife and took the help of a few people in getting her photograph attested as that of the wife of her father. She managed to hoodwink all the checks and balances in place to catch such cheating exercises and colluded with nefarious elements who helped her claim to get accepted so that she could draw pension illegally in the name of her dead parents.
She later got married in 2017 to Farooq and her husband was aware of her Rs 10,000 gains by cheating methods. He, however, reported the crime only when he and 36-year-old Mohsina have since separated.
In the last ten years, Mohsina has siphoned off more than Rs 12,00,000 or Rs twelve lakh by this forgery.
The Aliganj Police Station is probing the matter. The FIR is filed under several sections of the IPS including 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467(Forgery of document, valuable security or a will), 468 (Forgery for the purpose of cheating), and 471 (Using as genuine a forged document).
Police are also probing the nexus that made this forgery go undetected. They are looking for those who colluded with the woman, including the officers who did not look deeply into the pension application and sanctioned this spousal pension without raising vital queries and checks.
Additional District Magistrate Alok Kumar told the media that several lapses have been found in the justification and verification of the pension application. The dealing clerk in the office and the beat constable who verified the papers or identity will be questioned too.
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