Lost Aadhar card copy lands Tibetan man in legal trouble
By Lobsang Tenchoe
DHARAMSALA, May 19: A Tibetan man from Dharamsala has landed in legal trouble as his lost Aadhar Card copy was allegedly used by an unknown person to acquire a mobile Sim card which is involved in a cyber crime in Lucknow.
Tsering Topgyal, a Tibetan refugee presently working as a cook at Mewoen Tsuglag Petoen Model School reportedly lost his mobile phone in February 2015. In the course of availing a new mobile number, he lost a copy of his Aadhar Card. Out of sheer ignorance, Topgyal failed to register the incident before any police station.
According to the Tibetan Legal Association(TLA) based in Dharamsala, Topgyal received two legal notices dated February 24, 2016 and April 29, 2016 respectively from Kesar Bagh police station, Lucknow in relation with First Information Report (FIR) being lodged against him under section 420 Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 66 of the Information Technology (IT) Act.
Topgyal, who has little command over both Hindi and English Language, sought help from the Tibetan Legal Association. Extended its help, TLA on March 07, 2016 filed a reply to the first notice stating Topgyal’s complete innocence over the crime to the Lucknow police station.
Regarding the second notice demanding Topgyal’s presence to submit his statement before the concerned police station before May 15, 2016, Tobgyal along with Advocate Kunsang Topden and office administrator Jampa Damdul of TLA left for Lucknow on May 12, 2016.
The Following day the team met with the Investigation Officer (IO) Mr. Shri Ram and after going through the documents, it came to light that Mr. Udhay Shankar Shrivastava had filed the FIR stating that he had lost 56,000 rupees after receiving repeated fraudulent calls from a number – 9805163438 claiming to be an agent from a bank.
The police, upon receiving the details of the mobile number from the telecom company, got hold of Mr. Tsering Topgyal’s address details and served the legal notices to him.
After Topgyal and members of the TLA met the IO and presented their case statement, the IO was convinced that Topgyal is innocent and identified the case as a typical case of cyber crime (impersonation), where tracing the real culprit is almost impossible.
However, Tobgyal still has to follow the lengthy judicial process in the days to come. Number of similar cases concerning impersonation and Tibetans falling prey to fraudulent calls have also been reported at various Tibetan settlements as well.
