Two owners of government-funded ration shops were arrested by the police in Gujarat’s Surat for allegedly pilfering subsidised foodgrain by using hacked software and unauthorised biometric Aadhaar data of beneficiaries.
Police said that Babubhai Boriwal (53) and Sampatlal Shah (61), were arrested yesterday and were sent to police custody for five days.
Earlier, eight separate FIRs were lodged against as many fair price shop owners in the city following an investigation carried out by the district administration after some beneficiaries complained. The matter was then handed over to the Crime Branch.
“The accused who were authorized to use E-FPS application provided by the government for issuing subsidised items to beneficiaries by matching their stored biometric details with barcoded ration card and UID (Aadhar), used illegal software and somehow accessed the data built by the government. This way they diverted the quantum in name of unsuspecting beneficiaries, who were not utilising their allotted quota,” said the Crime Branch of Surat police in a press statement.
— source hindustantimes.com , ndtv.com