Holograms or other safety mechanisms, which can help detect fraudulent documents, are the need of the hour for RTO to prevent scams like the one detected on Thursday.
Officials believe that this might be a part of a larger scheme that could have been going on for years. The falsified check reports were similar to the original ones in every respect, except for the thickness of the paper and its quality, according to officials who are now asking for safety precautions like holograms on receipts.
“We have been working in the department for several years and instantly knew that the paper was of very good quality. The mark of the carbon paper was not present and there were pen marks on the receipt which is unusual,” said Gayatri Devi, Deputy Commissioner, Transport (Electronics City), who was consulted about the raid as soon as the forged documents were detected.
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However, other officials had a different opinion when asked if detecting such forgeries was easy. “What about those inspectors who have just joined the department? How will they know? There are more than 500 inspectors in the department … it is very easy to paste someone’s name and no one will check,” an official said.
Currently, the documents used by the RTO have little or no precautions to ensure their authenticity.