Haryana sounds alarm over fake birth, death certificates

In a series of letters, the state urges the Registrar General of India to act fast and plug the security breach in the Civil Registration portal which contains nationwide data

The Haryana health department has alerted the Registrar General of India (RGI) a number of times about hackers generating fake birth and death certificates by breaking into the RGI’s centralised Civil Registration System (CRS) portal, according to the Right to Information (RTI) Act stamped documents.

“Despite repeated requests and showing information about illegal use of the CRS portal, no action has been taken at your end and misuse of the portal is yet to be controlled,” reads an October 13 letter of the Haryana health department marked to the RGI. (HT File)

Between June 9 and October 14 this year, Haryana’s chief registrar (births and deaths) has shot off at least seven letters to the RGI seeking action on the “issue of national importance” while cautioning that if the illegality is not stopped immediately, the data “may lose its legal importance”.

Miffed with the RGI office for not taking firm action and stopping “misuse of the portal despite repeated requests”, Haryana has listed details on how the security of the CRS portal has been breached, stating “thousands of fake birth and death certificates have been generated fraudulently” in state.

“Despite repeated requests and showing information about illegal use of the CRS portal, no action has been taken at your end and misuse of the portal is yet to be controlled. The fake registration cases are still being informed to this office,” reads an October 13 letter of the Haryana health department marked to the RGI.

Haryana health officials said they are trying their best to check fake registration of events on the portal at their end.

In one of the recent letters to the RGI, which comes under the Union ministry of home affairs, the Haryana health department said they are unable to keep check on creation of fake registrar and sub-registrar on the portal as they don’t have control or access to the database.

The state health authorities stated that despite earlier communications regarding “misuse of the CRS portal by hacking it”, at least 243 births were registered illegally in Panipat’s ESI Hospital and primary health centre using bogus user identification in October.

The RGI officials in Delhi dealing with this hot-button issue remained inaccessible despite being contacted repeatedly in the past few days via their office telephones and mobile phones.

V Shrinivasan, joint director (IT), with whom Haryana had directly taken up the issue in the beginning, said he was in a meeting and assured that he will call back. Later, he didn’t take phone calls or respond to text messages.

The RGI’s office directed HT to contact Sandhya Singh, deputy registrar general, stating she is handling the issue in question.

Her staff, quoting her, said she was in a meeting and will be available later. When contacted again, she was said to be unavailable. Next day, Sandhya Singh, in a text message said she is on leave till December 10.

“The RGI staff have been in denial and are not addressing the matter which has a direct bearing on national security,” an official dealing with the issue said, adding that other states have also alerted the RGI office about fake births and deaths being registered in their states.

HOW THE ISSUE WAS UNEARTHED

As per information gathered under the RTI Act, initially, registrars and district registrars (births and deaths) of Palwal, Panchkula, Panipat, Nuh and Bhiwani had sounded the state health authorities and the local police about cases of fake birth and death registrations in their districts.

Following this, additional chief secretary (health) Rajeev Arora wrote to the then Haryana DGP Manoj Yadava to take immediate action on this issue of “national importance”.

Police sources say FIRs were lodged in some districts and one FIR was registered in Jhajjar on November 30.

Sources say what further set the alarm bells ringing was detection of vague emails during a review of the CRS portal and some unidentified people outside state even handed over such certificates to a health department official who was acting as a decoy customer.

These fake email ids were used to log into the CRS portal as registrar, sub-registrar or data entry operator. The users of such bogus email ids manipulated the database of the CRS portal and generated fake birth and death certificates. Seven set of email ids’ details were shared with the RGI office, as per official records.

Yet another alarming piece of information that the Haryana deputy director (monitoring and evaluation) has shared with the RGI office is the CRS portal showing 10 birth and death registration centres in Panchkula which are actually fake.

Surprisingly, even after the RGI office deleted these registration centres from the database, a birth certificate was issued from the Institute of District and Child Care, Panchkula, a fake centre.

“It seems that some outsiders have good control over the CRS website... it is beyond the understanding of this office as to how births got registered in a fake institution even after it was deleted from the database. It is a matter of serious concern. It is important to find the black sheep among the staff,” Haryana said, while again taking up the issue.