E-Paper
U.P. ATS nabs mastermind of fake birth certificates scam
Accused Ravi Kesh of Darbhanga, Bihar, had created two web portals to generate fake birth certificates online
The mastermind of the fake birth certificates racket was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) on Sunday from Lucknow after a month long chase, confirmed senior UP ATS officials. They said the accused identified as Ravi Kesh of Darbhanga, Bihar, had created two web portals to generate fake birth certificates online.
The accused generated as many as four lakh fake birth certificates and 5,000 fake death certificates from different villages and districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the past two years, they added.
The scam was first exposed in Salon block of Rae Bareli district when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in July second week flagged certain certificates made on the addresses of some 12 Rae Bareli villages after recovering certificates from some people, including a few Bangladeshi nationals arrested from different states recently.
The ATS officials said Ravi Kesh was wanted in the case registered at Salon police station limits of Rae Bareli on July 17. They said he created two web portals www.crsogovr.in and www.thedashboard.in in 2022 and 2023 respectively to online generate fake birth certificates.
The ATS officials said the accused roped in around 4,100 users of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar through his Facebook page, mainly operators of cyber cafes and Jan Suvidha Kendra of UP and Bihar, and formed a wide nexus to generate online fake birth and death certificates.
As per the officials, 1,500 users out of 4,100 are active users and were permanent customers of him. They said these active users easily used to generate online fake birth and death certificates, which is originally generated through the Centre’s Civil Registration System (CRS) portal.
They said the accused used to earn around ₹3,000 per day. They further explained all these users were part of the network spread across different districts and states to further misuse it to have benefits of different government schemes.
They said the accused were connected to one another through social media platforms and WhatsApp groups through which they used to share desired date of birth, name and address to get the fake certificates and later used to make payment online after sharing PDF of generated certificates on the group.
On July 17, assistant development officer of Salon block Jitendra Singh had lodged an FIR against one village development officer Vijay Singh Yadav whose ID and passwords were used to generate fake birth certificates through CRS portal, Zeeshan and his father Rizwan, who operated Jan Suvidha Kendra in Salon town and one minor who helped them.
The investigation revealed that the fake birth certificates were issued from the same centre after which all three were arrested and sent to jail on July 19 while the minor was sent to juvenile home.
On August 3, the UP ATS arrested six people from different districts and claimed to have exposed a wider network of misuse of fake birth certificates issued using the CRS portal. A day later, the Rae Bareli police arrested seven more people from different districts in the matter.
