A Gujarat-based Kerala man has been sentenced to seven-year rigorous imprisonment for allegedly impersonating his friend and landing jobs at several prominent companies. He was on the run after allegedly murdering his wife in 2003.
Additional Sessions Judge (Bhopal) Swayam Prakash Dubey convicted Tarun Jinaraj under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and fined him Rs 11,000.
“The prosecution has successfully proven beyond reasonable doubt that the accused…forged valuable documents such as a passport, PAN card, driving licence, Aadhar card etc., in the name of Praveen Bhatele to establish himself as Praveen,” the court said.
Jinaraj was arrested by the Gujarat Police from Delhi on October 5, 2023 after he jumped interim bail in the murder case, the trial in which is still going on in Gujarat.
He was first arrested in November 2018, after being on the run for 15 years, and sent to Sabarmati Central Jail where he spent five years as an undertrial.
The impersonation case was filed in Bhopal based on a complaint by Praveen Bhateley, Jinaraj’s college friend who ran a judo institute for underprivileged children in Bhopal.
According to the prosecution, after allegedly murdering his wife, Jinaraj went to Bhopal in March 2003 and approached Bhateley for work. Bhateley offered Jinaraj work as a spoken English teacher at his institute. During this period, the prosecution said, Jinaraj allegedly scanned Bhateley’s documents, including marks sheets and identity cards, which he used to forge ID cards and education certificates. Jinaraj also obtained a passport for travel to the US while working for a tech company in Bengaluru, the police alleged.
Additional Public Prosecutor Vinod Dubey argued that Jinaraj used the forged documents to deceive several firms, “leading these companies to hire him as their employee/ officer at a higher salary due to his deception”. Jinaraj married another woman from Pune in 2008 and the couple moved to Bengaluru.
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