LUCKNOW: In a major breakthrough, Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (UP STF) arrested three persons involved in public distribution system (PDS) scam on Sunday.An internal audit of food and logistics department had detected pilferage of 2.2 lakh tonnes of wheat via 1.86 lakh fraudulent transactions. The department had found that 43 districts were affected by the menace and registered 22 FIRs across UP. The case was given to STF on September 4 because of the technicalities involved and wide expanse of the scam.Most fraudulent transactions were found in Allahabad (37,500), followed by Meerut (27,000), Muzaffarnagar (19,000) and Ghaziabad (16,500).STF arrested Mohammed Aamir Khan, a fair shop price owner, his brother Mohammed Amaltash who was associated with a contract related to providing ‘e-pos’ devices for updating Aadhaar of beneficiaries, and his associate Pushpendra Pal. All three were arrested from Wazirganj.STF also recovered two point of sale (PoS) devices and two computers from accused.SSP (STF) Abhishek Singh said that the accused had exploited the lacunae in the food and logistics department’s website. The shop owners connived with the other two accused and supply inspectors to rig the system.“In order to accelerate Aadhaar linking, National Informatics Centre (NIC) had created a window on the food and logistics department’s website for updation of beneficiaries’ Aadhaar details and its login id was given to supply inspectors only,” added Singh.Amaltash confessed that he secured login id and password of website from supply inspectors Sangeeta and Kaushalendra Pandey. Aadhaar of one beneficiary was used to sell ration multiple times, said Singh.“After putting thumb of ration card holder on PoS machines called ‘E-Pass’ the accused entered Aadhaar details of other beneficiaries to make fraudulent transactions and later restored the original numbers,” the SSP added.The accused pilfered ration of over 100 beneficiaries since July and taught the trick to otherfair price shop (FPS) owners. Similarly, the third accused Pal, a computer operator, had come in contact with one Sonu Singh who told him about job of uploading and editing data on food and logistics department’s website. “Pal met one Leena Singh, owner of a fair price shop, and used login ID and password to make 1,400 fake transactions,” said STF officials. IG STF Amitabh Yash said that the total loss under the scam could be pegged at over Rs 20 crore and more arrests were likely.