The Uttar Pradesh Police’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) said on Friday that it has arrested 10 people allegedly involved in a major identity racket that created fake Aadhar cards and other Indian identity documents for foreign nationals.
According to the police, the forged documents were reportedly made using a mix of electronic and manual methods and could be misused to obtain passports and government benefits.
The police said eight members of the racket were arrested on Thursday and two more were taken in custody on Friday. The accused include three residents of Azamgarh, two each of Mau and Saharanpur, and one each of Ghaziabad, Gorakhpur and Auraiya, police said.
Additional Director General, Law and Order, Amitabh Yash, said the accused are being questioned to identify other members of the racket.
The police said they have recovered a large number of electronic devices used for allegedly creating fake Aadhaar cards, fingerprint scanners, laptops, mobile phones, a substantial number of forged Indian documents, printers, desktop among other items.
According to the police, the accused have allegedly facilitated the creation and modification of fraudulent documents to help illegal immigrants obtain Aadhaar cards and other critical identity proofs, which could potentially be misused for passports and government schemes.
According to the ATS,intelligence over the past few months indicated that a syndicate was misusing Jan Seva Kendras and other UIDAI-authorised Aadhaar enrolment agencies in districts across Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, Haryana and the Delhi-NCR region. The group allegedly used VPNs and remote-access tools to create new Aadhaar entries and to make unauthorised changes to existing records.
The ATS said accused persons exploited temporary access at nationalised banks, post offices and enrolment centres to process fraudulent enrolments. Foreign nationals, including Rohingya, Bangladeshis and other migrants, were among those said to have obtained forged or tampered Aadhaar cards by paying substantial sums to the operators, the police added. The fake Aadhaar cards were then used to make passports and claim benefits under government schemes, they said.
