Fraudsters hack CRS portal, issue fake birth certificates

Two years after Haryana raised red flags over hacked civil registration system (CRS) portal with the Registrar General India (RGI), authorities in Yamunanagar have filed two criminal cases against unknown accused for issuing around 97 fake birth certificates and one fake death certificate, police said on Tuesday

Two years after Haryana raised red flags over hacked civil registration system (CRS) portal with the Registrar General India (RGI), authorities in Yamunanagar have filed two criminal cases against unknown accused for issuing around 97 fake birth certificates and one fake death certificate, police said on Tuesday.

The case comes nearly two years after Haryana alerted RGI, which comes under the Union ministry of home affairs, over the certificates being generated by unauthorised persons after breaching the security of the CRS portal.

A police spokesperson said the cases were registered under sections 120-B, 420, 467, 468 and 471 in Yamunanagar City and Sadar police stations.

Dr Rajesh Kumar, deputy civil surgeon, Yamunanagar, in his complaint to the police, said that CRS IDs were hacked at the district civil hospital, and 43 fake birth certificates and one fake death certificate were found to be issued during an internal probe in August 2021. “In December 2021, another bunch of 54 fake birth certificates were found to have been issued,” Dr Kumar said.

According to the list accessed by Hindustan Times, nearly all the fake certificates issued to the applicants have a residential address in Haryana, except for a handful of persons belonging to Punjab and Delhi. Out of the total 97, 11 certificates were issued locally, and the rest were mostly in the districts of Panipat, Faridabad, Gurugram, Palwal, Sonipat and others.

Health officials said fake birth certificates were generated using the ID of Jagadhri civil hospital by a CHC centre operator in Bhamnauli last year, and a case was registered.

This is not the first time that the Haryana police have registered a case over the issuance of fake birth certificates. In the past two years, since the issue was first raised in December 2021, at least half a dozen cases have already been registered in various districts of the state with regard to the issuance of fake birth certificates.

The case comes nearly two years after Haryana alerted RGI, which comes under the Union ministry of home affairs, over the certificates being generated by unauthorised persons after breaching the security of the CRS portal that RGI maintains. Following a news report by Hindustan Times (’Haryana sounds alarm over fake birth, death certificates’, December 2, 2021), RGI had highlighted that there was a “misuse of user/login ID and passwords in the existing portal/software” developed for online registration of birth and deaths by unauthorised persons. RGI had requested the Haryana government to conduct a proper enquiry into the matter.

Later in June 2022, the state government issued an advisory “beware of birth and death certificates being generated from fake websites” and following an enquiry by the health department, a nexus came to the fore in many districts of the state.

In the advisory, the state government called upon the public not to fall into the traps of some sites offering birth-death certificates in lieu of money.

“Even after such fake sites were closed, new sites sprang up under other names. After the health department started checking if the issued birth-death certificates are original, as a result of this, a large number of fake birth and death certificates have come to the notice, against which police action is being taken,” the state advisory said.

Yamunanagar City station house officer, inspector Kawaljeet Singh, said, “We have lodged the cases and are tracing the source of fraud. We will look into the said portal if it was hacked or if some gang is involved in this through other means.”