NID Forgery: Ringleader could access all EC servers

Md Shah Nur Mia, ringleader of a syndicate which handed forged national identity cards to Rohingyas, has been arrested, CMP investigators said yesterday.

They said 32-year-old Shah Nur, a technical expert at the Election Commission headquarters, had access to all the NID servers and he made hefty sums by helping the Myanmar nationals get the cards.

Shah Nur was arrested from his office in the capital on Monday and was taken to the headquarters of the Counter Terrorism (CT) unit of the Chattogram Metropolitan Police (CMP) yesterday morning, investigation officer Inspector Rajesh Barua told The Daily Star.

Late in the day, he was shown arrested in a case the EC filed with the Kotwali Police Station on September 17, the officer said.

CT investigators said like Sagar and Satya, members of a similar syndicate, Shah Nur too knew usernames and passwords of all the NID servers. Using the IDs, he would make dubious entries to the servers, they said.

Nur’s syndicate is run by 15 to 20 members in Chattogram and Cox’s Bazar, the official said, but did not give any name for the “sake of investigation”.

They said they were trying to arrest the other members of the nexus.

Sagar and Satya are members of a syndicate headed by Joynal, an office assistant of Double Mooring Thana Election Office under the EC office in Chattogram. Although Joynal is behind bars, the other two are on the run.

Investigators said Shah Nur came under law enforcers’ radar after police and the Anti-Corruption Commission launched investigations into the NID forgery. The scam surfaced a government enquiry that found at least 73 suspicious applications were uploaded to the EC database for issuing the identity cards.

Police have so far arrested seven members of two syndicates engaged in the crime. The arrestees included five EC staffers, of whom four are data entry operators.

They were being interrogated.

Police sources said Mostafa, a data entry operator who was arrested on Friday and now on a five-day remand, worked with Shah Nur in the past.

Inspector Rajesh Barua told The Daily Star that they learnt about Shah Nur’s involvement in the crime based on information gleaned from Mostafa.

“We will interrogate Shah Nur to learn how he operated the syndicate from Dhaka,” he said.

Also, Kotwali Thana Election Office’s data entry operator Shahin, held on Sunday in connection with the scam, is Shah Nur’s brother-in-law, the sources said.

Two other data entry operators Jahid and Pavel, who work at Bandar Thana Election office and Double Mooring Thana Election office respectively, were arrested the same day for their alleged involvement in the forgery.

Wishing not to be named, a CT official said, “Shah Nur’s younger brother and brother-in-law work as staffers of Election Commission offices in Chattogram. They would send personal identification numbers [PINs] to Shah Nur and he would upload data to the NID server,” the official said.

Shah Nur would then print out the NID cards and send them to his syndicate members in Chattogram via courier, the official said.

ACC investigators said Shah Nur’s brother works at the Double Mooring Thana EC office while his nephew is a computer operator in Banshkhali.

A cousin of the ringleader is a staffer at the Cox’s Bazar Sadar EC office while his sister is a data entry operator at Panchlaish Thana EC office, said the investigators.

Two other cousins of Shah Nur are data entry operators at Boalkhali upazila EC office.

The syndicate employs 10 to 15 others for outsourcing, the ACC investigators said.

Earlier this month, police and passport officials said some Rohingya refugees were making Bangladeshi passports using forged NID cards with the help of some locals and Rohingya brokers.

The Rohingya people were using fake names and addresses while applying for the identification documents.

Later, the EC conducted an internal probe, which found 15 of its staffers involved in the forgery. Most of them have been sacked for their involvement in different irregularities, said Brig Gen Saidul Islam, director general of the National Identity Registration Wing of the commission.

EC officials still can’t say exactly how many Rohingyas, who are Myanmar nationals, have secured the cards through the illegal means.

Meanwhile, a Chattogram court yesterday placed each of the three arrested data entry operators -- Jahid, Shahin and Pavel -- on two-day remand.

The court passed the order after they were produced before it with five-day remand pleas.