Aadhaar racket: 2 accused involved in enrolment project, had access to govt’s registration platform

Tirupur: Two men from Bihar, who were arrested here recently for producing Aadhaar cards for illegal migrant labourers, had worked in the Aadhaar card enrolment project of a nationalised bank, police sources said.
Ramshisah Verma of Nawada district and Ravishankar Singh of Nalanda district had accesses to the Aadhaar card registration platform and are suspected to have produced hundreds of cards using fake identity proofs.

“They were involved in the Aadhaar card enrolment drive outsourced by a nationalised bank in Bihar and were involved in card enrolling as well as correction processes. They had access to the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) registration platform,” a senior police officer told TOI.

“It seems that even before deployed by the nationalised bank, the two were part of the enrolment when UIDAI had engaged private firms. They were associated with the bank for three years. The duo directly uploaded fake identity proofs given by illegal applicants, which were required to apply for Aadhaar in the enrolment platform. So, it is not easy to identify those cards. They had received Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000 from each applicant. We suspect the duo also produced fake identity proofs for the illegal applicants,” the officer said. “We have written to UIDAI about the scam and have sought details about how the accused violated their authorisation accesses and how many fake cards were produced by them.”

Police are also on the lookout for two men from Bihar, who assisted the duo. One of them had stayed with Ramshisah in Avinashi here, sources said.

The scam came to light when the city police arrested eight Bangladesh nationals for illegally staying in the dollar city on October 9. Some of them were staying here for several years without documents like passport and visa. But all of them had Aadhaar cards.

Police then arrested Ramshisah Verma, who was residing in Ranga Nagar in Avinashi and was running an illegal Aadhaar enrolment centre from the house. Police seized equipment including computer, fingerprint scanner, iris scanner and several documents from him. They later arrested his accomplice Ravishankar Singh, who was residing in Vengamedu near Angeripalayam here.