Fake birth certificates: HMC forms probe committee

Howrah Municipal Corporation (HMC) formed a committee to probe into the issuance of “fake birth certificates”. The matter came to light after a woman from Bally in Howrah applied to the civic body for duplicate copies of the birth certificate for her three children.

Nilanjan Chattopadhyay, commissioner of the civic body, said a committee comprised of the deputy commissioner, chief auditor and a doctor has initiated a probe into the incident. The Committee will submit its report within seven days.

According to an official of the corporation, the matter would have never come to light if Guddi Singh, a resident of Hari Charan Banerjee Street, had not lost the birth certificates of all her three children when she went to a shop to get photocopies of those documents on March 31.

Following all norms, the woman had lodged a complaint with the police after losing all the documents and applied for duplicate certificates to the civic body.

She has three children. All three were born in Kedarnath Aragya Niketan at Bally in Howrah. Her eldest daughter was born on October 5, 2001. She gave birth to another girl child on March 15, 2007 and her youngest son was born on November 9, 2009.

Before preparing the duplicate certificate, officials of the civic body was shocked when they were verifying the records in the register of the hospital. There was no mention in the hospital’s record which shows that the three children were born in Kedarnath Aragya Niketan.

An official of the civic body said that there could be many such cases. The incident had taken place when the area was under the jurisdiction of Bally Municipality which was run by the CPI(M). The 16-ward municipality was merged with Howrah Municipal Corporation in 2015.

According to the local councillor, it could be a scam of the erstwhile CPI(M) led civic body. They demanded a proper probe into the incident to ascertain the culprits.

“How they have got the birth certificates when their names were not registered in the record book of the hospital?” he raised a question adding that there must be some people those used to run a racket when CPI(M) used to run the civic body.

The senior officials of the civic body feel that there is a big racket operating in the area. First of all the committee was trying to find out whether the woman had given birth to the children in this particular hospital or not.

The reason being it will make clear whether she had somehow managed to get the certificates though her children had not born in the hospital.