Five youths forge residential, caste certificates to join Army

Deepender Deswal

Tribune News Service

Hisar, July 3

The craze to join the Army has driven youths to forge their residential addresses and even their castes.

The matter came to light when the Army Recruitment Office (ARO), Hisar, identified five youths who were selected during the recruitment drive for soldier (general duty) held in February for four districts of Hisar, Jind, Sirsa and Fatehabad. The selected candidates had given fake residential certificates of villages in Jind, Sirsa and Hisar districts and also changed their castes to get recruited.

The Army authorities have cancelled their selection.

Sources said the Military Intelligence (MI) unit at the Hisar Military Station got a tip-off about unscrupulous agents operating in Bhiwani district.

During scanning of the documents of the selected candidates, they zeroed in on five candidates who belonged to Sui village in Bhiwani district, but gave fake address certificates of Jind, Sirsa and Hisar districts and also furnished fake caste certificates.

The sources said that MI personnel tracked down their original village and caste. They mentioned their caste as Rajput though they belonged to different OBC castes. These youths had also participated in recruitment drive in Rohtak.

The accused have been identified as Mohkam Singh, Shiv Charan, Anil, Sunil and Monu, all residents of Sui village in Bhiwani district.

“The Army doesn’t carry out recruitment on caste basis, but we have caste-wise vacancies for the respective regiments. It seems that the unscrupulous agents know the practice and could also have inside information about caste break-up of vacancies during the February recruitment drive in Hisar. Thus, the youths of Sui village were given fake addresses of Hisar, Jind and Sirsa districts and their castes were also changed to Rajput, knowing that the Rajput Regiment has vacancies,” said the sources.

The ARO, Hisar, has written to the district administrations to take action against the officials concerned who had issued the fake address and caste certificates to these youths.

Bhiwani SP Ganga Ram Punia said that they had informed the Army that the youths originally belonged to Sui village. “However, no further communication has been received from the Army,” he said.