Cops nab cyber cafe owner for creating fake government documents

The accused confessed that she did not have any official documents and had instead approached a cyber cafe owner to forge them for her

Mumbai: The police on Saturday arrested a cyber cafe owner for allegedly creating fake government and private documents, including forged seals, used for character verification certificates.

The police on Saturday arrested a cyber cafe owner for allegedly creating fake government and private documents, including forged seals, used for character verification certificates.

According to the Cuffe Parade police, the fraud came to light on Friday when a woman, Haseena Safiqul Khatun, approached the police for the character verification required for her passport application.

When the police scanned the QR code on her birth certificate, it did not give the expected result. Usually, scanning this QR leads to a secure official webpage confirming the document’s authenticity. Further investigations revealed discrepancies in the font on her Aadhaar card.

The police said they also found irregularities in the photocopy of her ration card where some of the information was written in black ink in a different handwriting. When the police checked her Class 12 board certificate issued by the Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Council, they found that the photograph on it matched her Aadhaar photo, when they scanned the QR code on the certificate it displayed a message stating that no matching document was found.

Khatun was then asked to produce original documents but confessed that she did not have any of the official documents and had instead approached a cyber cafe owner to forge them for her. She was then taken into custody for questioning, where she told the police that the documents were prepared at the Sah Communication cyber cafe in Ganesh Murti Nagar, Cuffe Parade. The cyber team of Cuffe Parade police then raided the cafe and arrested its owner, Sujitkumar Shyam Thakur, 21.

The police said that Thakur was using multiple editing tools and softwares to create forged documents. His computer hard drive was seized and sent for forensic examination.

The police also found that Thakur had allegedly prepared fake documents for at least seven other individuals.

Khatun and Thakur have been booked under several relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and sections of the Information Technology Act. He was produced before a court and remanded to seven days of police custody.

“We are questioning Thakur to find out where he learnt to forge documents and how many more people had made fake documents with the help of Thakur,” said a police officer from Cuffe Parade police station.