Jaipur: The Rajasthan Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) widened its probe into a suspected fake Aadhaar racket after uncovering evidence that forged identities were used not only by local operatives but also by a suspected Pakistani national who allegedly obtained a passport and lived undetected in Jaipur.The ATS Friday arrested Kuldeep Sharma from Hanumangarh, whose interrogation opened multiple investigative threads, including the suspected use of fake Aadhaar credentials by gangsters to procure passports and flee the country.Officials said Sharma allegedly ran a sophisticated illegal enrolment setup that bypassed biometric verification safeguards.On Saturday, ATS teams conducted coordinated searches across several districts, seizing digital and biometric equipment while mapping a network of dubious enrolment centres believed to be part of the operation. Sources said investigators are now tracing every Aadhaar generated through these centres over the past several months to identify beneficiaries, facilitators and possible handlers.At the centre of the probe is the suspected Pakistani national, who, according to officials, secured an Aadhaar card through one such fraudulent facility and used the identity to live and work in Jaipur before eventually obtaining a passport.Investigators said the racket deployed unusually advanced methods to defeat biometric authentication systems. Dummy fingerprints fashioned from red and white rubber were used to gain unauthorised access to Aadhaar enrolment portals, while paper-based replicas of retina images were allegedly presented before iris scanners to spoof identity verification. Officials described the technique as “highly calibrated” and designed to evade routine checks.Sources indicated that the same infrastructure may have been used by organised criminal syndicates, including gangsters attempting to erase or alter their identities. “We are examining a possible pipeline where fake Aadhaar identities were used to obtain passports and facilitate escape from the country,” an officer said.The ATS is also expected to share its findings with UIDAI and passport authorities to address systemic vulnerabilities exposed by the racket.
