NID For Rohingyas: They turn their house into fake ‘EC office’
Members of a syndicate were using a house in Chittagong’s Hamzarbagh to make forged national identity cards for Rohingyas, police said yesterday.
Officials of Chattogram Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism unit said they raided the house in Momenbag Residential area early in the day and recovered an EC laptop and internet modems, among other devices.
Police and EC officials said the devices were being used to make dubious entries to the NID server.
Talking to the media at his office, Deputy Commissioner (counterterrorism) Mohammed Shahidullah of the CMP said the raid was carried out based on information gleaned from Mustafa Faruk, a technical expert who lived in the house.
He said Faruk works under a temporary project of the Election Commission (EC) in Chattogram’s Boalkhali. He was detained on Thursday night for his alleged involvement in the illegal syndicate.
“We came to know about Faruk’s involvement in the forgery while interrogating Joynal, who has recently been arrested in a case over providing NID cards to Rohingyas,” Shahidullah said, adding that two others were also held in the case filed with Kotwali Police Station on September 17.
Joynal is an office assistant of Double Mooring Thana Election Office under the EC office in Chattogram.
“During the drive yesterday, police found two laptops, including an official one, two pen drives, signature pads and internet modems at the house. Police also recovered a camera cover, but the camera was missing,” the DC said.
The police official claimed that the laptops and the pen drives had a list containing names of Rohingyas who the law enforcers believe contacted the syndicate members in the past.
“The arrested technical expert admitted that one of the laptops was an official one. The device had a software needed to upload data to the NID server,” he said.
Talking to The Daily Star later in the day, several EC officials looking into the NID scam confirmed the matter.
The CMP DC said, “We’re working to trace the Rohingyas who already made or were trying to make forged NID cards. We’re also trying to know more about the laptops.
“We will write a letter to the Election Commission providing it with details about the [official] laptop. I hope they would be able to tell us the “name of the office from which it was stolen.”
Several police officials said Mustafa was from Feni’s Domdoma area and he started working for the EC in 2014 on a temporary basis.
For the next two years, he was part of different EC projects. He then took a break and again joined the commission as a technical expert last year.
He was well known for his skills and had access to different EC offices, thanks to his “good relations” with officials, they said.
On September 17, Kotwali police recovered another official laptop of the EC after raiding Joynal’s house in the port city’s Andarkillah area.
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.
Recently, a government probe body found that at least 73 suspicious applications were uploaded to the Election Commission database for issuing NID cards. The committee unearthed the information while probing the forged NID card of a Rohingya woman in Chattogram.
DC Shahidullah said they have identified several EC staffers involved in syndicates providing forged NID cards to Rohingyas in exchange for money. He did not elaborate on the matter for the sake of investigation.
Investigators probing the NID forgery said Joynal and Mustafa were once part of the same gang that would charge Tk 50,000 to Tk 60,000 for each NID card.
Mustafa used to get Tk 3,000 to Tk 4,000 in cuts. He thought the money was not enough and so decided to join another syndicate, headed by a technical expert working at the EC office in the capital, they said.
Asked, DC Shahidullah said they were trying to arrest the ringleader and other members of the nexus.
Wishing not to be named, an investigator said Mustafa had access to at least six local NID servers. He claimed that Mustafa admitted getting internet modems from some office assistances at EC offices.
Inspector Rajesh Barua, investigation officer of the case filed on September 17, said Mustafa knew many user names and passwords of the NID servers.
DC Shahidullah said they were investigating to know how the devices reached the house and whether there was any negligence on part of EC officials in this regard.
Meanwhile, a Chattogram court yesterday placed Mustafa on five-day remand in the case.
Metropolitan Magistrate Abu Salem Md Noman passed the order after Mustafa was produced before the court with seven-day remand prayer.
The same court sent Joynal to jail after the end of his three days in police remand yesterday.
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