Four persons, allegedly manipulating the electronic public distribution system (PDS) for subsidised ration to the poor in Gautam Buddh Nagar, were nabbed by the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) Monday, according to officials.
The Noida unit of the STF, along with officials of the local police's Cyber Cell, nabbed the four accused, including a ration dealer, from Surajpur area of the district, they said.
The state government uses the PDS to distribute ration to the poor via fair price shops. The ration dealers in the shops use the ePOS (point of sale) machine, which is linked to the Aadhaar of the beneficiaries.
Recently, it had emerged that some dealers had attached around 200 Aadhaar numbers to the ePOS machine and distributed the ration to unauthorised accounts and the administration had ordered a probe into the matter.
"We had received inputs from the Lucknow headquarters of the STF about the large scale pilferage in ration distribution by manipulation of Aadhaar and biometric details. Building on that information, we arrested these four persons today," an STF official said.
"A computer along with its CPU, 2ePOS machine, mobile phones, original Aadhaar cards and huge number of its photocopies, among other documents were seized from their possession," the official said.
Those arrested have been identified as Gaurav Joshi, Nem Singh, Sonu Kumar and Saurav Kumar, according to the STF.
Joshi is a ration dealer and would also provide other dealers with login-id and passwords of the beneficiaries, while Singh is a computer operator.
Sonu worked as a middleman and also collected data, while Saurav, son of a ration dealer, worked as a middle providing computer operators to others, the STF said.
Similar ration frauds, involving large scale pilferage in PDS, were reported from various parts of Uttar Pradesh, including Ghaziabad, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and Allahabad in the recent months.
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