The Azamgarh Police in Uttar Pradesh has arrested Ahagir Sheikh for allegedly cloning the fingerprints of 165 people and fraudulently transferring around Rs 15-20 lakhs from their accounts through the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AEPS), according to a press release. Sheikh was running a Customer Service Point centre in the area, Superintendent of Azamgarh Police Anurag Arya revealed. The arrest was made after Ghaffar Khan, a resident of Mehajpur in Azamgarh, informed the police that an unknown person had withdrawn around Rs 2 lakhs from his Baroda UP Gramin Bank by authorising the transaction with a fake thumbprint linked to an Aadhaar card, a press release by Azamgarh Police said in Hindi. https://twitter.com/azamgarhpolice/status/1515270086658981893 The incident raises questions on the perceived ‘infallibility’ of Aadhaar and the government’s move to link the Unique ID with the electoral rolls of the country in an attempt to weed out duplicate voters. How were the fingerprints cloned? After Sheikh was taken into custody and subjected to police interrogation, he reportedly confessed to the crime and said that Ajit Singh, a resident of Robertsganj in the Sonebhadra district of UP, had taught him how to clone people's fingerprints. When people visited his customer care center, Sheikh used to first take the impression of their thumb along with the details of their Aadhaar card Then, the thumb impression was transferred to butter paper Rubber or polymer was placed on the butter paper The thumbprint-laden rubber was placed on a fingerprint authorising machine; thus, creating a cloned version of a…
