A TOURIST car driver thought he had mastered the art of forgery with keen observation, but landed up behind bars with his first attempt at it.
The Malad police on Wednesday arrested 22year-old Vijay Prajapati, driver of a rent-a-car service for allegedly stealing a blank cheque from a passenger's cheque book and forging his signature to withdraw money .
Prajapati, a driver with Gudiya Travels, a car rental service in Goregaon picked up Balwant Teni a tourist from Haryana four days ago. Teni, an employee of HDFC Bank in Haryana was in Mumbai and had rented the car for site seeing, said Maruti Rathod, senior police inspector of Malad police station.
"For his daily expenses, Teni used to withdraw money from HDFC bank through a self cheque," said Rathod. Interestingly, whenever Teni signed a cheque in the car, Prajapati would carefully note his style of signing, he added.
On Tuesday when Teni as usual went to the bank leaving his cheque book in the car, Prajapati tore a cheque from the middle pages of the cheque book. After dropping Teni off at his hotel, Prajapati forged Teni's signature on the blank cheque and filled in an amount of Rs 50,000 to be encashed.
He took the cheque to the Malad branch of HDFC and posing as Teni gave the cheque to the cashier.
When the cashier saw the signature he sensed foul play and asked Prajapati to sign the back of the cheque in his presence. While Prajapati did so, the cashier pulled out Teni's account details and found that the cheque was forged. While the cashier kept Prajapati engaged, the bank's manager called the police and got Prajapati arrested.
megha.sood@hindustantimes.com
