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2 held in MP for creating fake voter ID cards
With the arrest of two youths, the Madhya Pradesh police are looking at a possible cyber fraud gang allegedly involved in duping people by getting access to their bank accounts by changing their personal details on Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), or Aadhaar, website, a police officer said
With the arrest of two youths, the Madhya Pradesh police are looking at a possible cyber fraud gang allegedly involved in duping people by getting access to their bank accounts by changing their personal details on Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), or Aadhaar, website, a police officer said.
There have been instances of fake Aadhaar cards being created by photo-shopping original Aadhaar letter, but this could probably be one of the few cases where a person’s original details on UIDAI website was changed to get control of their Aadhaar details and linked bank account, the police officer added.
The MP police on Friday arrested two people from Morena, who were reportedly working for one Hariom Sakhwar, the prime suspect in the case of illegal access to the Election Commission of India (ECI) website for creating fake voter identity cards. Shakhwar, 18, a resident of Ambah town of Morena, is absconding, police said.
A police officer, who is investigating the case, said Sakhwar used to send some link to the two arrested accused -- identified as Akash Jain and Ajay Singh Kushwaha, both 19 years old and unemployed -- for making changes in Aadhaar details by changing the mobile numbers, police said.
“They used to create a fake identity document of a person using their biometric details on the UIDAI website through that link within a few minutes,” the officer said.
He added that for each change, they would get ₹300 to 400 and most of the times the new identity would be used for a cyber crime.
Morena superintendent of police Lalit Shakyawar said, “Jain and Kushwaha used to get ₹300-400 for creating fake IDs. We are investigating the case separately and more revelation will be done after the arrest of Hariom Sakhwar as we are yet to know about the link which he used to send to them for creating fake IDs.”
The officer cited earlier said they cannot confirm yet whether the UIDAI system was hacked or the accused used to some other mechanism to make changes in the details of a person. “There are many unanswered questions from their interrogation,” he said.
The two accused, who operated a small cyber shop, smashed their computers before their arrest, police said. “We are trying to retrieve data from their systems,” the officer said.
Elaborating the modus operandi, police said the two accused would swap mobile phone SIM cards to withdraw money from bank accounts of people. Through SIM swap, the fraudsters would obtain duplicate SIM card and get the original card blocked for some time. In the period when the original SIM is blocked, the accused would use the fake one to withdraw money from the person’s bank account gaining access of the one-time passwords (OTPs).
The Uttar Pradesh police on Thursday busted a gang involved in creating fake voter identity cards by accessing the Election Commission’s website by using password of a contractual employee of the commission in Saharanpur. As one of the accused was from MP, the state police started separate investigation into the case.
Shakhwar, a school dropout, used to run a cyber café, where he came in contact with another accused Vipul Saini and mastermind Arman Malik. They together created about 10,000 fake IDs, police said.
MP Police on Friday detained four friends of Shakhwar and released two of them, who were also teenagers. The other two, Akash and Ajay, have been arrested under Section 420 (fraud) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of IT Act, police said.
