Chandigarh/Gurdaspur, Aug. 6 -- Continuing its crackdown on corruption in the Punjab transport department, the Vigilance Bureau (VB)has unearthed a fake heavy vehicle driving licence racket in Gurdaspur, four months after uncovering a similar racket, spread across 10 districts, in April. Exposing a nexus between officials of the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) Gurdaspur, the State Institute of Automobile and Driving Skills Centre (SIADS), Mahuana, Muktsar Sahib, and private document agents operating in Gurdaspur district, the VB has registered a corruption case against seven accused, arresting four of them, including a motor vehicle inspector (MVI). Raids are underway to nab the remaining three. Disclosing this on Tuesday, an official VB spokesperson said an in-depth probe was launched against Pratibha Sharma, a data entry operator at RTA Gurdaspur, following a complaint by a Pathankot resident. Verification revealed that 23 out of 51 driving training certificates, purportedly issued by SIADS centre, Mahuana, were fake. The forged certificates featured manipulated system-generated fields like the unique certificate number, QR code and mobile number-embedded receipt number, which could only be altered by institute officials. The mismatch of these authenticity parameters confirmed fraudulent creation. Sukhdev Singh, a light motor vehicle (LMV) instructor and GI Driving In-charge at SIADS centre, Mahuana, allegedly misused his access to generate the fake certificates, each carrying a government fee of Rs.430, causing direct financial loss to the state exchequer, the probe revealed. The spokesperson informed that the investigation pointed to the role of private agents as well, sourcing applicants and facilitating document forgery in exchange for bribes. These include Kulbir Documents Centre, Shelly Documents Centre, GMD Documents Centre and Punjab Documents. Financial trails traced direct payments from these centres into the bank accounts of Pratibha Sharma and Rakesh Kumar, a former RTA data entry operator, now posted at SDM office, Batala. Following probe, VB arrested Rakesh and three other key accused: MVI Sukhdev Singh, who is a resident of Maidowal Kalan village in Gurdaspur; Amit Kumar of Shelly Documents Centre and Jagpreet Singh of Punjab Documents. Three other accused, Pratibha Sharma, Kulbir Singh of Kulbir Documents Centre and Rakesh Kumar of GMD Documents Centre are absconding. The arrested accused will be presented before a court on Wednesday. In April, in a widespread bribery network, where licences were being issued without proper driving tests, as many as 16 FIRs were registered and 24 people were arrested, including three district transport officers (DTOs), government staff and private agents. The agents and officials were arrested from Mohali, Fatehgarh Sahib, Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, SBS Nagar, Sangrur, Tarn Taran, Bathinda and Gurdaspur. Investigations revealed that agents were bypassing the automated driving test system in multiple ways. Punjab has 32 automated tracks where driving tests are recorded on video and scored digitally. Agents, in collusion with RTO officials, were copy-pasting old video footage of candidates who had passed and uploaded it under the names of new applicants who never actually took the test. In many cases, the same vehicle was used multiple times, raising suspicion. Proxy drivers were also used to take tests on behalf of others, using vehicles arranged by agents....