The Special Task Force (STF) of West Bengal Police has busted a fake Aadhaar card racket operating through a legitimate Aadhaar centre near Kolkata’s Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport. Two men, Sheikh Miraj Hossain and Abdul Quddus, were arrested on Wednesday night in Birbhum district for issuing fraudulent Aadhaar cards.
Police revealed that the scam involved sophisticated manipulation of the Aadhaar centre’s laptop MAC-ID and GPS location. While the Aadhaar work appeared to be done in Birbhum, the actual operations were carried out from a location near the Kolkata airport. The fraudsters also manipulated the fingerprint authentication of data entry operators from a different place.
Typically, UIDAI assigns each Aadhaar centre a unique laptop MAC-ID, registered location, and data entry operator fingerprint to ensure secure and location-specific Aadhaar enrolment. Without these, access to Aadhaar services is denied. However, the accused bypassed these security protocols to create fake Aadhaar cards from unauthorized locations.
Police suspect that many of the fraudulent Aadhaar cards may have been issued to illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Besides the two arrested, individuals from Birati in North 24 Parganas and Uttar Pradesh are also involved and currently at large.
Authorities have seized the laptops used in the fraud and launched a search for the other suspects. The investigation is ongoing to determine the full extent of this Aadhaar forgery ring.
