Less than a week after the launch of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, and already a racket of fake birth certificates and school certificates has already emerged in Ratuya of Malda's Chanchal subdivision. The fraudsters allegedly sold counterfeit certificates to locals using forged seals of various schools and gram panchayats in exchange for large sums of money.
After police received information from various sources, officers from Shamsi outpost under Ratuya police station conducted a raid on Saturday night and arrested two main culprits. The arrested Abdul Khalek and Sharif Khan are uncle and nephew, according to Shamsi outpost sources. This racket had been operating for the past month under the cover of a computer centre in the Andharu More area of Chandmani-2 gram panchayat.
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On Saturday night, upon receiving a tip-off of the police raid, the accused tried to remove all documents. The duo attempted to destroy evidence by throwing fake stamps and documents into a nearby drain, similar to an earlier case involving a BJP MLA accused of corruption. However, the police retrieved the materials the same night. Seized items included a laptop, printer, mobile phones, a fingerprint device, and fake stamps and seals of several schools and gram panchayats.
When the uncle-nephew duo were caught red-handed, police confiscated a laptop, mobile phone, printer and even a fingerprint device from that shop. Additionally, fake stamps of several schools, counterfeit seals of gram panchayats, and letterheads were also recovered. How was this business operating? After the 'SIR' process ended in Bihar, preparations began in Bengal as well. The uncle-nephew duo's entire plan started from then.
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The arrested individuals first went around investigating whether villagers had birth certificates or school certificates. Many people in the area work as migrant labourers in other states. The majority are school dropouts. Many elderly villagers don't have birth certificates. The arrested duo took advantage of this opportunity to spread panic that names would be excluded from 'SIR' if these two documents were missing. Due to this fear, many villagers started coming to the uncle-nephew duo to get certificates made.
Abdul-Sharif allegedly charged some people one and a half thousand rupees and others two thousand rupees to make certificates. The villagers didn't even realise these were fake. Police recovered fake stamps of several local schools from the arrested duo, including Ratuya's Sripur High School, Milangarh High Madrasa, and Batna High Madrasa.
Additionally, counterfeit seals of multiple gram panchayats, including Shamsi and Chandmani, were found. Mosharraf Hossain, headmaster of Batna High Madrasa, was shocked after learning about the matter. He said, “This is extremely alarming. I've learned that my signature has been forged”.
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Sharif is a close relative of Asfatur Rahman, the Trinamool chief of Chandmani-2 gram panchayat. BJP district general secretary Abhishek Singhania has attacked Trinamool over this issue. He said, “Such rackets have been created with Trinamool's support to create panic among people. We strongly condemn this”.
However, Asfatur did not want to comment on this matter. Her husband and local Trinamool leader Mohammad Abdur Tauf said, “The relationship being mentioned is a distant one. If someone does wrong, police and administration are there for that”.
Malda Police Superintendent Pradipkumar Yadav said it is being investigated whether anyone else is involved in this incident.
