New Delhi: Police arrested an MCD contractual staffer on Oct 30 for allegedly cheating people by promising them free treatment under EWS quota at private hospitals. Posing as an employee at the CM’s office, Sonu, 27, used forged letters to defraud relatives of poor patients. His plans unraveled when a hospital in west Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh mailed the CMO to verify a suspicious letter bearing the purported signature of officer-in-charge Anil Aggarwal, S C Vashishtha, OSD to CM, told police. The letter, issued for the treatment of a patient, Shyam Shankar, had spelling mistakes and misaligned text, prompting the hospital authorities to seek confirmation. They also received a call from a man identifying himself as “Balbir Singh Rathee from CMO”, asking them to proceed with the treatment.The patient’s wife told cops Sonu had given her the letter. His phone numbers were traced to an MCD office in Karol Bagh, where he works as a contractual gardener, deputy commissioner of police (north) Raja Banthia said. Cops raided the office on Oct 29, but Sonu had fled by then.He was later arrested from his Tagore Garden house. Police seized his mobile phone, an original letter with CMO’s letterhead and bearing the signature of the officer-in-charge, forged letters of the CM camp office, fake MCD and Haryana govt I-cards and a motorcycle bearing a tampered registration plate. Sonu stole the original CMO letter from the office a few months ago and forged copies of it, police said. He then targeted patients, promising them free treatment in exchange for Rs 5,000 per case. He used Google Translate to fill in patient details, before calling up the hospitals to make the cases appear genuine.Originally from Jhajjar, Haryana, Sonu was earlier a security guard. In the past one and a half months, he wrote five fake letters to Action Balaji in Pashchim Vihar, Maharaja Agrasen (Punjabi Bagh), BLK Max (Karol Bagh), Mata Chanan Devi (Janakpuri) and Ganga Ram Hospital (Old Rajinder Nagar), the DCP north said.An MCD official told TOI, that police were yet to inform it about the case.
