Bareilly police bust fake birth certificate racket

BAREILLY The Bareilly police on Thursday busted a fake birth certificate racket here as more and more people were reportedly queuing up to procure birth certificates

BAREILLY The Bareilly police on Thursday busted a fake birth certificate racket here as more and more people were reportedly queuing up to procure birth certificates amidst apprehensions over the implementation of the new citizenship law (CAA), the proposed National Population Register (NPR) survey scheduled to commence from April 1 and NRC.

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“The racket was being operated by some cyber café owners, who are taking advantage of the rush and preying on the fears of people over CAA, NPR and NRC,” said a senior police officer.

The owner of one e-suvidha kendra in the city has already been arrested and attempts were on to trace others involved in the racket, including staff of some hospitals and the municipal corporation, whose role is being probed, he said.

The police got wind of the fraud following a written complaint by Bareilly Municipal Corporation (BMC), which detected four such fake applications for issuance of a birth certificates filed from a cyber café in Zakhira locality here.

“We cross-checked the certificates issued from the e-sevidha kendra in Zakhira locality with our record and found they had fake registration numbers,” said city health officer Sanjiv Pradhan, who lodged the police complaint.

“The registration number is usually of 10 digits but the ones issued by the e-suvidha kendra to Yunus (2007), Ahil (2010), Sumaira (2012) and Ayesha (2015), sons and daughters of Hina Fatima, wife of Zamir Ahmad, had only nine digits,” he said.

The birth certificate process went online on September 15, 2013. “We have 123 e-suvidha kendras in Bareilly district and another nine Common Service Centres (CSC) affiliated to the chief medical officer. Birth certificates for newborns can be obtained from e-suvidha kendras after proper verifications within a month, and for an earlier period they can only be issued by CSCs,” says Khaliq Ahmed, a BMC staffer.

Also, these days the demand for birth certificates has doubled. “Usually, we issued 70 to 80 birth certificates a week. But since January 1, we have issued 269 certificates,” said Ahmed, adding that the majority of those queuing up were between the ages of 50 to 60 years. BMC officials claim that the online system was introduced to check forgery in birth and death certificates as all the 224 hospitals in the district are now linked to a database in their records.

The BMC on Thursday posted a public notice to create awareness and apprise people about the procedure and steps to be followed for procuring a birth certificate.

THE PROCESS:

*Obtain a birth certificate registration form by visiting your municipal corporation office

*Fill up and submit it along with the letter given by the hospital at the time of your baby’s birth.

*The application has to be made within 21 days of the baby’s birth. In case the birth is not registered within 21 days, police verification will take place in order to issue it, as directed by the revenue authorities. This usually tends to take a longer time.

*Post that, the office will verify details such as place and time of birth, parents name, gender, address, nursing home/hospital etc. Documents required in this case: Parents birth certificates, marriage certificate of the parents, proof of birth letter in hospital, parents’ identity proof (for verification).

*If the verification is all in place, you will get the birth certificate sent to your address after 7-15 days.

*In case of urgency, you can, in some cases, get the birth certificate sent to you within a week by providing a self-addressed envelope.