KOLKATA: The cyber cell has issued a warning — for the second time in two months — asking citizens to be careful when submitting their Aadhaar details, both online and offline. The questioning of three members of a gang — based in Egra and trained by history sheeters in Giridih-Jamtara — has revealed they used genuine Aadhaar documents fraudulently to issue over a hundred SIM cards a day and selling them to fraudsters to carry out cyber crimes.
“During lockdown, all the manual filling up of forms came to a stop. Instead, the companies had left the process to its retailers to gather details for new connections. The three accused — Shantanu Pradhan, Saugata Panda and Nabakumar Patra — collected information and original Aadhaar numbers from recharge shops. One had to freeze photographs of customers to establish that they were genuine. the retailer too had to uphold his/her photograph. The accused got multiple such photos,” said an officer.
They downloaded an app where the company’s forms were available online. The accused downloaded a second app and used it to cut, copy and paste photographs from these videos with various genuine Aadhaar numbers and addresses. Since the Aadhaar numbers were genuine, the accused managed to pass all stringent checks by the company. These SIM cards were then sold out to fraudsters at a premium,” said an officer.