73-yr-old lawyer held for 89 cases of theft, forgery

Seventy-three-year-old Dhani Ram Mittal of Sonepat, who is an advocate and a handwriting expert, has 89 cases of cheating, forgery and car thefts lodged against him. He was arrested from Rohini on Thursday night.

Other than a diploma in handwriting and graphology from Kolkata, which allegedly helped him forge signatures, he is a science graduate from Rohtak and possesses a degree in law from Rajasthan.

He began his career in law in a district court in Rohtak in 1970. Police claimed that in the late 1970s he even forged a letter which appointed him to preside over a district court for 40 days.

Police said Mittal would start by conducting a recce of parking lots in court complexes and target old cars. He used to park his own vehicle near the one he wanted to steal and would unlock the other car using a master key, police said.

If anybody noticed and asked what he was doing, he would say he was forgetful and mistook his car to be the one he was trying to unlock. "It was a good excuse because nobody would suspect that the elderly man was actually trying to steal a car," a police officer said.

Mittal sold the stolen cars after preparing fake documents, police said. "As he had access to regional transport offices through touts, he took their help to procure registration certificates. In most cases, he used to put forged signatures on the papers using the skills he acquired during his handwriting diploma course," the officer said.

His luck ran out when police, acting on a tip-off, caught him while he was trying to steal a car in Rohini. Police said Mittal, who owns a house in Jahangirpuri, handed over three stolen cars and a motorcycle.

During questioning, he revealed that he had forged an order for compulsory leave for a district judge in Jhajjar, Haryana.

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