Mumbai: The Dahisar Police arrested retired assistant sub-inspector (ASI) Sanjay Jagtap for his alleged role in clearing a forged passport application while serving in the passport verification branch in 2023. Jagtap, who retired on October 31, was taken into custody on November 5 after the arrest of three other accused, Satish Dhakane, Nilesh Tiwari and Pankaj Kumar Singh, in connection with the same case. After spending two days in police custody, he was remanded to judicial custody on November 7.
According to police officials, the case revolves around Rajendra alias Rajinder alias Jinder Guru Vachansingh, a notorious narcotics offender with cases registered against him in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, as reported by the Indian Express. Convicted in one of those cases, Vachansingh was released on medical grounds in 2023 and later shifted to Mumbai, where he began residing in Dahisar with his wife Baljit Kaur and their seven-year-old daughter in a rented flat.
Fake Documents Used To Apply For Passports
Vachansingh, with the help of Dhakane, Tiwari and Singh, fabricated identity documents, including Aadhaar cards and supporting papers, to apply for passports for himself and his family. Despite the forged nature of these documents, which claimed to have been issued in 2021, when Vachansingh was actually in jail, ASI Jagtap approved the verification and forwarded the applications without proper scrutiny.
The fraud came to light only after Vachansingh managed to obtain his passport and flee the country. Later, the Haryana Police intercepted a four-kilogram heroin consignment and arrested two individuals connected to Vachansingh’s network. During interrogation, the accused revealed that Vachansingh had resumed his narcotics operations abroad and was supplying contraband from outside India.
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Further investigation by the Haryana Police traced the passport used by Vachansingh back to Mumbai, leading them to alert their counterparts in Dahisar. Upon verification, it was confirmed that the passport had been cleared based on forged documents, implicating Jagtap and his accomplices.
Later, the Dahisar Police registered a case in March 2025 against the four accused under Sections 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471 (using forged documents) and 120(B) (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, along with Section 12 of the Passport Act, 1967.
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