Telangana Aadhaar card racket kingpin arrested in Indore

The alleged kingpin of a gang involved in fraudulently making nearly 7,000 Aadhaar cards in Telangana was arrested on Thursday in Madhya Pradesh's Indore city, five months after the fraud came to light in the southern state, a police official said.

The cyber cell of the Madhya Pradesh police arrested the accused, Pawan Kotia (29), a native of MP's Shivpuri district, he said.

''Acting on leads shared by the Telangana police, we arrested Pawan Kotia here. He was produced in a local court which granted his transit remand to the police for taking him to Hyderabad,'' said Jitendra Singh, Superintendent of Police (Indore cyber cell).

Kotia was well versed in cyber technology and was imparting technical help to recognised Aadhaar service centres in Assam and Madhya Pradesh, the SP said.

Singh said Kotia was accused of supplying login IDs and passwords of Aadhaar centres in Assam provided by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government agency mandated to issue the 12-digit number, to a Telangana-based gang for a large sum of money.

With the help of these login IDs and fabricated documents, nearly 7,000 new Aadhaar cards were enrolled in Telangana and details of old ones were changed, the police officer said.

Singh said the Telangana police had arrested eight members of the gang in December last year.

After these arrests, Kotia had escaped from Assam and was hiding in Indore, he added. PTI HWP LAL RSY RSY

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