Rae Bareli scam: Around 10K birth certificates ‘issued’ in a village of 6,500!

Startling revelations are surfacing in verification of fake birth certificates issued on the bogus addresses of many villages of Salon development block of Rae Bareli district. A senior official privy to the development said the highest number of fake birth certificates were issued in Noorudinpur village that has a population of around 6,500.

He said around 10,000 fake birth certificates were issued on bogus addresses between June 2022 and June 2024. Interestingly, only 45 children were born in this village in 2022-23 and merely 84 children were born in 2023-24 when the birth register maintained by health workers was verified.

Similar discrepancies came to fore in Lahurepur village of the same block having a population of around 2,800. Here, around 3,841 fake birth certificates issued on bogus addresses. However, only 33 and 38 children were born in the village in 2022-23 and 2023-24 respectively.

UP Police additional director general (ADG), law and order, Amitabh Yash said several agencies, including ATS, are working on it in coordination with district authorities to ascertain motive and beneficiaries of these fake birth certificates.

The final inquiry report regarding verification of the birth certificates was to be submitted to the district panchayati raj officer (DPRO) Saumya Sheel Singh on Monday. He, however, was not available over phone for his comment.

These facts have surfaced during an ongoing verification drive done in 12 villages of Salon development for the past one week. The villages where birth verification drive is going on include Nooruddinpur, Lahurepur, Gopalpur Anantpur, Sirsira, Gadi Islamnagar, Kalu Jalalpur, Sanda Saidan, Aunananish, Madhavpur Ninaniya, Prithvipur, Dubahana and Palhepur.

Chhote Lal, son and representative of Gadi Islampur village head Kripala Devi, said the district authorities carried out a verification drive in his village panchayat and matched the offline register and online details of birth and death certificates.

He said the authorities have detected that around 2,000 fake birth certificates have been issued in his village which has a population of around 3,200. “Gadi Islampur has a population of 3,200 and the manual verification confirmed that over 2,000 fake certificates were issued to beneficiaries claiming to be residents of the village,” he said.

Gadi Islampur village has been the epicentre of the scam as the two prime accused Zeeshan and Rizwan in the fake birth certificate scam exposed in these villages are of the same village.

The duo operated a Jan Seva Kendra in Salon town from where these certificates were issued using the government’s Civil Registration System (CRS) portal without filling in the proper addresses and other details of beneficiaries.

Salon circle officer (CO) Vandana Singh said the third accused in the scam village development officer Vijay Singh Yadav has mentioned in his complaint that Zeeshan and Rizwan used his ID and password of the CRS portal to issue these certificates.

She said Yadav approached the local police on July 15, seeking an FIR against a 24-year-old man named Mohammed Zeeshan Khan and his father Rizwan Khan, 50, for allegedly misusing his ID and password of the online birth registration portal.

Earlier, the matter surfaced when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) red flagged certain certificates made on the addresses in some of these 12 villages after recovering certificates from some people earlier this year.

On July 17, the Rae Bareli police registered a first information report under sections 318 (4) ( cheating), 319 (2) (cheating by impersonation), 336 (3) (forging electronic record), 337 (forging a document), 338 (forgery of valuable security) and 340 (2) (using forged document or electronic record as genuine) under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and arrested four people, including Salon village development officer Vijay Singh Yadav.

“As per the report of initial inquiry conducted by ADO Jitendra Singh, an FIR was lodged against Yadav, Zeeshan and his father Rizwan and one minor boy for issuance of 19,184 fake birth certificates on the addresses of four villages,” the CO said.