Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, August 1

The crime wing of the Ludhiana police has busted a gang involved in making Aadhaar cards on the basis of fake residential proofs.

The gang was using stamps of MLAs and other officials to get the Aadhaar cards issued. Three members of the gang had been arrested, the police said.

The accused have been identified as Raj Kumar, a 48-year-old resident of Mohalla New Subash Nagar, Tibba; 42-year-old Vinod Kumar Bhalla from Tilak Nagar, Rahon Road; and Raj Kumar Sunny (35) of Bajra Colony.

Another accused in the case, Kuldeep Kumar, is yet to be arrested, the police added.

The police have recovered three laptops, fingerprint scanner, an eye scanner, two printers, 16 Aadhaar cards, five PAN cards, five vote ID cards, nine finger prints, 36 certificates of Aadhaar enrolment form, and one fake stamp from the accused.

DCP (Crime) Simratpal Singh Dhindsa, Additional DCP (Crime) Rupinder Kaur Bhatti and ACP (Crime) Mandeep Singh addressed a joint press conference in this regard.

As per the police, the gang had made more than 500 Aadhaar cards of persons who had no residential proof.

“Accused used to charge Rs 1,100 for new Aadhaar card. If a person was not having any residential proof, the accused used to create one as per the wish of the applicant. Even stamps of MLAs were used on the Aadhaar enrollment form,” said the ADCP.

The officer said in some forms the accused even used the stamp in the name of legislator Harish Pushkar. However, in reality there is no such MLA in Ludhiana, said the ADCP.

“If Aadhar enrollment forms having wrong MLA name were cleared by the authorities concerned, this signals the connivance of Aadhaar officials as well. We are probing the matter further to bust the entire racket,” Bhatti added.

Accused used to fill the Aadhar form on the website ID of Deputy Commissioner, Dubri, Assam – DHB_IND_046 – and attach fake residential proofs along with the stamp of the MLA. After stipulated time, Aadhaar card used to be issued, said the police.

Only Aadhaar cards pertaining to Assam can be issued using this ID. But in this case, the ID was being operated from Abhi Studio, on the Rahon Road here. It could be possible that the accused had hacked the ID, they said.

Security threat

• The racket may help criminals get Aadhaar cards of anywhere in India by just paying Rs1,100
• Though the accused made Aadhaar cards for Ludhiana persons only, it is possible to create Aadhaar cards for any address using the system
• Suppose a gangster or any anti-social element gets an Aadhaar card of the address of his choice, he may use it further to create bank accounts, passport, etc.