VAJA: JAIL FOR POLICE WORKER WHO SOLD STOLEN DOCUMENTS TO IMMIGRANTS

A Metropolitan Police worker who sold stolen lost property forms to illegal overstayers to help them get new passports has been jailed for 18 months.

Babulal Vaja, 60, sold the forms for up to £30 a time to help immigrants hoodwink the authorities in a ‘pre-meditated, sustained and sophisticated course of criminal conduct’.

The deception was uncovered when police officers caught Vaja red handed passing on the paperwork to a man in a pub.

Southwark Crown Court heard the forms were used to trick officials into issuing new passports, believing the previous one had been lost.

Vaja was working as an administrator in the telephone investigation bureau at Southall police Station, west London, at the time the offences were committed, and had access to the paperwork known as ‘form 99s’.

When his car and home address was searched officers found 32 lost property forms, a quantity of blank Indian passport applications and an A4 piece of paper with a number of names and passport numbers written on it.

Vaja also abused his position to scour confidential police records to find out information about a friend’s son and to help people avoid speeding fines.

The court heard that for £100 Vaja was willing to assist motorists escape punishment by providing false information.

On at least three occasions he filled out forms stating the driver at the time of the alleged offence was a friend visiting from Lloret-de-Mar, in Spain.

Jailing Vaja for 18 months Judge David Higgins said: ‘Taken in the round it is plain to me that such an array of offences can only mean that you decided to abuse your position and embark on a pre-meditated, sustained and sophisticated course of criminal conduct.

‘It involved the grossest breach of trust.’

A second man, Surinder Singh, 40, who was one of the motorists Vaja helped avoid a speeding fine, was also jailed for six months.

He employed Vaja to help him after being clocked travelling at 64mph in a 50mph zone.

Prosecutor Karen Robinson said Vaja’s actions in selling the lost property forms marked a serious breach of police protocol.

‘The circumstances in which such forms are provided are strictly monitored by the police.

‘Vaja provided these forms for money and without recourse to the safeguards or controls used at the police station.’

Vaja, of Park Avenue, Southall, pleaded guilty to two counts of misconduct in a public office and three charges of perverting the course of justice, earlier this year.

Co-defendant Surinder Singh, 40, of Scotts Road, Southall, admitted one count of misconduct in public office.

ENDS