Kadapa police arrested a member of an interstate gang involved in cloning Aadhaar-linked fingerprints on Friday, February 3. According to Kadapa Superintendent of Police KKN Anburajan, special police teams which were deployed to track down the perpetrators arrested the suspect, Seshnath Viswakarma (27) from Gorakhpur. Two accomplices of Seshnath, are wanted by the police and they are on the lookout for them.
Addressing a press meet at Kadapa, the SP said, “There are 380 complaints lodged against this gang in the NCRB portal and 128 FIRs have been registered against this gang in several states.” He added that police investigation revealed that the gang had cloned Aadhaar-linked fingerprints of 440 persons located across various Indian states and looted money from individual bank accounts without the knowledge of the account holders.
Of the 380 cases complaints filed against the gang, 107 cases were filed in Telangana. Police suspect that the swindlers might have withdrawn amounts running into crores from various bank accounts. According to the SP, the gang obtained fingerprints through intermediary payment gateway apps for Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AePS), which accepts payment by authenticating the customer's biometrics. The accused obtained the machines for replicating fingerprints. This enabled them access to OTP for stealing money.
Police recovered a hard disk with a database of one lakh Aadhaar card numbers, one lakh fingerprints, a scanner, two mobile phones, a fingerprints device and a monitor. The SP said that the police have alerted the concerned police station regarding the case. The police advised that any unauthorised debits from the account should be immediately reported and advised that people be careful while making payments.