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Six persons were arrested on Friday for running a fraudulent Aadhaar card centre in Chakkarpur for the last several months. The police said as many as 1,500 fake Aadhaar cards in the names of different people, 1,200 Aadhaar forms,1,500 blank Aadhaar cards, and around ₹2 lakh have been seized from their possession. Scanners for iris and fingerprints as well as laptops have also been recovered.

On Friday evening, the chief minister’s flying squad, along with personnel of the Sector 29 police station and district administration raided two shops in Chakkarpur, acting on a tip from the CID intelligence wing.

According to the police, the biometric machines had been procured from a Rajasthan-based operator, who provided his thumbprint to run the machine. “The perpetrator would allegedly charge between ₹1,500-2,500 per Aadhaar card. They were also allegedly involved in making PAN (permanent account number) cards, ration cards and identity cards of private companies fraudulently,” Chander Mohan, deputy commissioner of police (east), said.

The police said the perpetrators would issue at least 40 Aadhaar cards a day, though they operated only twice or thrice a week, and paid ₹6,000 per day to Mahender Sen, the operator whose thumb impression they had taken on silicon, wrapped on a rubber thumb, to operate his auhorised account and gain access to the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

The suspects were identified as Chitranjan Yadav and Ashish of Najafgarh in Delhi, Happy Singh of Uttar Pradesh, Karan of Nepal, Pawan of Jind in Haryana and Gufram of Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh. The police said Mahender Sen was on the run.

The DCP said the suspects have been booked under sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 120 B (conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at the Sector 29 police station.

The suspects were arrested from two shops in Chakkarpur and have been remanded to police custody. The police said that they are trying to zero in on those involved from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

The police said they recovered ₹74,550 from one shop and ₹1,25,500 from a rack in the second shop.

During the investigation, the police found that the suspects had downloaded certain software on their laptops and had a complete kit for preparing identity cards, PAN cards, and Aadhaar cards.

DCP Mohan said they were conducting raids at suspected locations and questioning suspects to reveal names of other aides involved in the forged documentation work. “We want to tell residents to not fall prey to these fraudsters and to get their identification cards made from authorised places. If caught getting forged documents made, action will be initiated against consumers too,” he said.