In their investigation into stealing of food grains from the public distribution system by fair price shop owners, the cybercrime cell of Ahmedabad police has found more than 1,100 casts of beneficiary fingerprints made on some silicone-like material. The modus operandi used by the racketeers is shocking as a fingerprint cast can be used to endorse any document, open locked apps and mobile phones and bypass bio-metric barriers that depend solely on fingerprints.
In pursuit of the trail they have been following since December 2019, police have till date arrested 40 persons, with the last six arrested since Monday, January 3, said Rajdeepsinh Zala, DCP, cybercell. The mastermind behind the racket, Bharat Chaudhary of Banaskantha, had been arrested last December.
Sources said Chaudhary and his gang held soft copies and associated data of nearly 2,500 fingerprints.
Corrupted fair price shop owners used to provide the fingerprints and data to Chaudhary, who used to take Rs 1,000 to prepare each fingerprint cast from scans. The fingerprint casts were then used to imprint fingerprints of poor people and siphon off their ration from the public distribution system. The food grains and other material were then sold in
— source timesofindia.indiatimes.com | Sarfaraz Shaikh | Feb 6, 2020
