Chennai: Five persons, including four staffers of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) were arrested by the police on Saturday for indulging in forgery that caused losses worth several lakhs of rupees every month to the organisation.
The accused had been making big bucks far exceeding their paychecks by preparing duplicates of the Travel As You Please Ticket (TAYPT) worth Rs 1,000 that the MTC issues and selling them to unassuming passengers for the past one and half years. The loss to MTC may have been close to Rs 2 crores in that period.
The forgery wing of the Central Crime Branch, after sustained investigations, unearthed the racket, masterminded by an accountant with the MTC and an Electricity board staff. The main accused, S. Krishna Kumar works as an accountant at the Adambakkam bus depot. “He had bought a Xerox machine worth '2.5 lakh and made colour copies of the TAYPT tickets from a rented place in Adambakkam. Every month, he gave 200 such copies to a ticket issuing staff member in Velachery, M. Jagadish, who sold it for him,” an investigating official said.
Krishna Kumar came in contact with S. Ramesh Babu, a contract staff with the Electricity Board who too printed fake passes from his hideout in Tiruttani in Thiruvallur district. “These tickets were then handed over to ticket issuing staff T. Prakash of Anna Nagar depot and D. Suresh Kumar, the depot's accountant who sold it from there,” the official added. Every month, more than 200 duplicate passes were printed and issued to the customers, police said. All five have been arrested.
