LUCKNOW: The Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) regional bench, Lucknow, has directed the Uttarakhand police to lodge an FIR against a man who served the Indian army for 34 years impersonating his brother.
He was exposed when he applied for getting his PAN linked with pension and so did his brother who had also retired from the army.
The case relates to one Narayan Singh who got himself enrolled in the army as Shyam Singh on November 30, 1982.
He joined 13 Guards Battalion — an infantry as a soldier. Singh retired on June 30, 2001 as Naik.
He later re-enrolled in the defence security corps (DSC) on March 3, 2002 and discharged on July 1, 2018 after rendering more than 16-years of service.
With two retirements, he was eligible for two pensions. He had linked his permanent account number (PAN) and aadhar with his bank account while in DSC service.
‘Accused used bro’s 5th grade marksheet’
However, in May 2017 his army pension was stopped after bank found that two permanent account number (PAN) cards (BCTPS78***) with same name (Shyam Singh), same father’s name (Madan Singh) and same date of birth (July 11, 1963) but with two different individuals' pictures was been used by two different men. Later his DSC’s pension too was stopped.
Thereafter it also came to light that Shyam Singh is the name of the accused's younger brother, who too served the army with 6 Mechanized infantry.
He joined on March 15, 1982 and served for 20-years before retiring on January 31, 2002 as Havildar.
In April 2017, the SBI’s Kashipur branch (Udham Singh Nagar district) asked real Shyam Singh to link his PAN with bank following which it was found that imposter Shyam Singh had already linked PAN with SBI’s Rampur branch of Almora district. Thereafter bank officials stopped the pension of the two siblings. Later the duo moved to AFT.
After four-year-long trial, the AFT Lucknow bench of justice Umesh Chandra and vice admiral Abhay Raghunath Karve ordered Uttarakhand police to lodge an FIR against accused Narayan Singh.
The court observed that accused Narayan Singh had used his younger brother’s fifth grade marksheet to enrol in the Indian army.
However, agricultural land records and ration card entries had his name as Narayan Singh. He used his brother’s PAN card details to link with pension payment order (PPO) for disbursement of pension.
Speaking to TOI, Lt Col (retired) Seemit Kumar, the joint registrar of AFT Lucknow said, “The case of impersonator never would have come into light, had the PAN card was not linked to bank and PPO.”
The judgement in the case came on Wednesday and a copy of the order was released on Thursday.
