Aadhaar Fraud is Not Only Real, But is Worth More Closely Examining

Aadhaar, India’s biometric authentication number, is often touted to be the ‘most trusted ID’ in the country. One of the arguments made in favour of Aadhaar is that it is more reliable compared to other IDs which can be easily faked or forged.

In the ongoing Supreme Court hearings, the Indian government and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the agency implementing the Aadhaar project, have repeatedly argued that Aadhaar will help curb ills like terrorism and banking fraud by ensuring that only “genuine” persons get access to mobiles, and banking services.

Keeping aside the fact that such arguments suggest a complete misunderstanding (or perhaps intentional misrepresentation) of what causes terrorism and banking frauds, a question remains: is Aadhaar as reliable and infallible as it is claimed to be? Contrary to the claims of curbing fraud, there have been various news reports which suggest that fake and forged Aadhaar details have facilitated frauds and unscrupulous activities. That Aadhaar could open the door to identity fraud and identity theft is something that has not been fully understood yet.

In the absence of any official data on this issue, a Google search was done for four sets of keywords – ‘fake Aadhaar’, ‘forged Aadhaar’, ‘Aadhaar fraud’ and ‘Aadhaar scam’ – to explore this vulnerability further.

The aim of the search was to get a better sense of the extent to which Aadhaar was being used for frauds and what made such use possible.

About 100 different cases (31 of which are from 2018) from all over the country were found where fake or forged Aadhaar was used. The full list can be accessed here.

Even this number is quite likely to be an underestimate as the search was restricted to only English media outlets. It is important to note that these cases are not meant to be exhaustive nor representative, but instead, seek to bring to light an issue that has not received much attention.

A long list of frauds

The search reveals that Aadhaar has been used for a wide range of purposes – carrying out land transfers, procuring passports, getting loans, casting votes, obtaining other IDs, siphoning off ration grains, etc. These include cases of ‘identity theft’ – Aadhaar details of persons have been altered, or Aadhaar details have been forged by changing the photographs and names and taking scans. The genuine holders of Aadhaar have subsequently found themselves in a soup when they were told that loans in their name were not honoured or land transfers in their name were carried out without consent. Such instances are especially striking given that identity theft is precisely what Aadhaar was supposed to fix.

While most of the cases involved a single or few persons indulging in petty frauds, a third of the cases were related to rackets where fake or forged Aadhaar were being mass-produced. The methods involved in these cases varied – the two most common were Aadhaar numbers being issued based on fake or forged documents, and details like name, photographs being forged using rudimentary editing techniques and printers. There have also been instances of biometric and/or demographic details (fingerprints, photographs, names and addresses) being altered at the stage of enrollment. In a few cases, sophisticated methods were used to exploit loopholes in the enrollment process to generate fake Aadhaar numbers. The most prominent of these was the case of a gang in Uttar Pradesh that was caught generating Aadhaar for fictitious persons by cloning the fingerprints of Aadhaar enrollment operators.

The usual official response has been to discredit such reports by stating that no authentic Aadhaar numbers were generated in these cases – that they were simply instances of forgery. Going by the various methods of fraud employed, this justification is only partly correct. In 45 cases, either valid Aadhaar numbers were generated (for instance using fake/forged documents) or the Aadhaar details in the database altered (for instance, using the online detail updating facility).

Further research is however needed to better understand both, the role of Aadhaar in curbing fraud, and the extent to which it enables fraud.