Fake rubber stamps, affidavits, Aadhaar cards seized

A gang involved in preparation of fake Aadhaar cards in north Delhi’s Shastri Nagar have been busted, a police officer said on Friday.

The police have seized fake rubber stamp of the District Magistrate (East), fake affidavits, 52 fake Aadhaar cards in the name of different people and 461 other Aadhaar cards from their possession, he said.

Signboard

A signboard reading ‘Govt. Authorized Center of Aadhaar Card’ has also been seized.

The accused were identified as Vikash Kumar (27) and Sushil Kumar (25). Both hail from western U.P.

Decoy customer

A special team was formed following a tip-off on Tuesday. The officer said a decoy customer was sent to the accused’s shop on pretext of changing the address on his Aadhaar card. The gang members performed the task in just a few minutes and charged him ₹500. They were caught red-handed.

During interrogation, Vikash disclosed that he started his own shop at Shastri Nagar in 2013. The shop provided facilities like photostat, scanning and Aadhaar cards. However, after a ban was imposed on preparation of Aadhaar cards on the premises of unauthorised private firms in 2017, Vikash started preparing PAN cards at his shop.

Hired as operators

Due to a sudden dip in his income, in January 2018, Vikas and his accomplice Sushil contacted one private firm, NICT, which is authorised to prepare Aadhaar cards. They were hired as data entry operators at an SBI branch in Green Park. Each of them were provided with a user ID and a password for making Aadhaar cards on the bank premises.

However, after a day, their user IDs stopped working due to some technical glitch. After this, both took away all the equipment used in making Aadhaar cards from the bank and started preparing Aadhaar cards illegally from Vikash’s shop at Shastri Nagar. They also got their user IDs reactivated illegally.

The accused allegedly used to charge people ₹400-500 per Aadhaar card.

The role of the NICT company is currently being examined.