MUMBAI: Three persons from Delhi and Pune were arrested on Thursday for forging digital signatures and presenting themselves as a company's directors on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) website. The signatory details of the directors were suddenly changed in March and three new persons were fraudulently shown as directors.

"A routine check on the website of the registrar of companies of MCA by a company official brought the forgery out in the open. The offence was planned by Sunny Goel (25)—CA from New Delhi—who got another accused, Jamir Shaikh (37) from Pune, as the director on the ROC's webpage while the third accused, a CS from New Delhi Kavindra Gupta (29), uploaded the forged documents to obtain the digital signatures," said an officer of the Mumbai cyber police at Bandra-Kurla complex.

The accused managed to substitute their names in place of the real directors of Unicorn Infra Project and Estate Private Limited and DDPL Global Infrastructure Pvt Ltd. The crime was discovered by the firm's company secretary on March 9 when he stumbled upon new signatory details with two unknown person shown as directors effective February 10, 2015. The investigation was taken up by joint commissioner of police (crime) Atul Kulkarni who led the team comprising additional commissioner of police (crime) KMM Prasanna and Sudhir Mahadik, R Sardesai, Umesh Gound of the BKC cyber police.

"The form used to make changes online with fake digital signature was obtained fraudulently from the e-Mudhra company. The name of Alok Mishra was added as additional director and thereafter as director in both the above firms," said Prasanna.

The accused have been booked under several IPC and IT sections for cheating and forgery. They were produced in court on Friday and remanded to police custody till September 16.