Fake Army Officer Held at Fort William Entry

Kolkata: A teenaged boy from Andhra Pradesh was caught by the Army for allegedly posing as a serving officer while trying to enter Fort William, the Eastern Command Headquarters, in a chauffeur-driven BMW car.

The accused, Borada Sudheer of Visakhapatnam, was later handed over to the Maidan police station and was arrested. He was stopped by the soldiers at the East Gate of Fort William during entry at around 1.10 pm on Friday, said Eastern Command spokesperson Wing Commander Himanshu Tiwari on Saturday.

When the soldiers asked the boy to show his identity proof, he claimed to be a 24-year-old B.Tech student but introduced himself as Major MS Chauhan of 5 GR (FF) (Army No IC 78040 N), showing a copy of his fake ID card in his mobile phone.

He also kept referring to his mobile phone while signing in the register at the kiosk, which prompted the soldiers to suspect him to be an imposter and detain him. Earlier, the boy was sent to a juvenile rehabilitation center in Odisha in September last year in a cheating case and was released in February.

On February 13 night he stayed at a hotel in Cuttack from where he fled in a taxi without paying a bill of Rs 6,393 and traveled without ticket in a train to Howrah the next day. The teenager later boarded a cab and checked into a hotel off EM Bypass.

A probe revealed that he had posed as Hyderabad City police constable Sunil Kumar to check into the hotels in Cuttack and Kolkata. On Friday the boy hired a BMW car from the hotel. While traveling, he introduced himself to the driver as an Army officer posted with President Body Guard.

The driver then urged him to get his daughter admitted under defence quota in Jadavpur University. The boy took the driver and his daughter to the JU from where they were asked to approach Fort William. When the boy tried to enter Fort William, he was caught.