‘Biometric data of beneficiaries from S Gujarat sold for Rs 7 lakh’: Cops

SURAT: Police investigation in the food grain pilfering racket using stolen biometric data obtained under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) revealed that biometric data like thumb impression of lakhs of ration card holders was sold for mere Rs 7 lakh.
The data was sold allegedly by employees of the companies contracted to collected the biometric data on government's behalf. The stolen data that was sold to the racketeers contained biometric data of all districts of south Gujarat, the police claims.

The details were revealed after two more accused were arrested in connection with the case by detection of crime branch (DCB) on Friday. On being produced in court, the accused were remanded to six days in police custody.

Mayur Rajendra Sharma (25), a resident of Swapna Shrushti Apartment on L P Savani Road in the city, and Kalpesh Chandrakant Shah (42) of Ranjit Coop Housing Society, Maninagar, Ahmedabad, were arrested by the city crime branch.

Police investigation revealed that Sharma had purchased the stolen biometric data from Shah for Rs 7 lakh. Shah got Rs 2.5 lakh commission out of that and the remaining amount he paid to the person from whom he had purchased the data.

"Shah had purchased the data from his contact in Tera Soft, a software company, which got contract of collecting biometric data on behalf of government for south Gujarat zone. Exactly who provided the data to Shah is a matter of investigation," the police said.

Sharma has done diploma in computer application and had developed the software with the help of other arrested accused. He had developed a parallel server to the government's online server through which the sale to NFSA beneficiaries were approved.

"Shah was earlier working as a data entry operator with an Ahmedabad-based company Ideal Systems Pvt Ltd that was given sub-contract for Narmada district by Tera Soft. He had knowledge about the data available with Tera Soft," police inspector, DCB, B N Dave said.

Arrested accused Rahul Suyal (23) and Krunal Mistry (27) were in contact with Sharma. Mistry was doing business with Sharma, while Rahul, son of a fair price shop owner, had demanded the data from Sharma to use it to pilfer subsidised food grains.