Pramod Mishra, Sub Collector Rayagada has unearthed a major fake identity cards racket in Rayagada town today.
The sequence of events is as follows:
A beneficiary of a social welfare scheme had filed an application in the office of Sub Collector Rayagada. There was a requirement of identity card and what was produced by the applicant led to unearthing of big fake identity card racket. The applicant produced an identity a Electoral Photo Identity Cards (EPIC) which was manipulated with a photo editing software. The card looked fake at the face of it. The Sub Collector Rayagada very cleverly got the details of the place and persons from where the applicant obtained the card and the revelations led to the chain of persons invovled in this, which finally led to a photo studio in front of the State Bank of India, Rayagada branch.
Sub Collector Rayagada along with Durga Charan Mahapatra, Tahsildar Rayagada and force from the local police station led by Parul Gupta, IPS ( UT) and IIC town police station, raided the photo studio and what came out of the bag was a very big and systematic set up of forging ID cards, including the EPIC cards and even that of Police and other security establishments.
There were 4 computers that were put to use for forging the IDs and hundreds of fake ID cards, majority of them being EPIC cards. The most disturbing finding was that there were fake cards of Police dept and other security agencies like CISF, CRPF and like, which can be a big national security issue in a naxal affected district like Rayagada. The four computers that were found in the premisis were loaded with apparently thousands of soft copies of such fake cards. Besides a register was found in which entries of the fake cards 'issued' by the photo studio were noted down.
The photo studio owner is said be in Berhampur now and police authorities are tracing him down. Collector Rayagada, Dr. Nitin.B. Jawale visited the spot and appreciated the worj done by the Sub Collector and Police authorities. talking to media persons he said that strongest possible case will be made against these counterfeiters and even provisions related to national security will be invoked against these offenders
