Kolkata: To address the issue of fake birth and death certificates, the state government has strengthened regulations. It has instructed all district administrations to obtain prior approval from the chief registrar of births and deaths within the Health department before appointing any registrar or sub-registrar responsible for managing these records in their districts.
The development arose after counterfeit death and birth certificates were uncovered in several districts.
Once appointed as a registrar or sub-registrar, the names, mobile numbers and user IDs of the designated employees must be submitted to the chief registrar of births and deaths.
The move comes in response to several instances of fake birth and death certificates detected by the police, prompting the need for stricter oversight of the government portal handling such documents.
During an investigation into the issuance of fake birth certificates in South 24-Parganas, the district administration and police recently discovered that as many as 510 fake death certificates were also created and issued.
The chief registrar of births and deaths has been urged to cancel these fake death certificates. A youth from Uttar Pradesh was arrested in Kolkata last month for furnishing a fake birth certificate in his passport application. The matter came to the notice of the security control organisation of Kolkata Police when its personnel checked the documents that he submitted with his passport application, following which he was arrested. The arrested youth was an original resident of Uttar Pradesh who had shifted to Kolkata and started residing in the Garden Reach area in the southern
outskirts of Kolkata.
Investigation revealed that the accused arranged the fake birth certificate from a local Panchayat in the Gosaba area in the South 24-Parganas.
However, his attempt to get a passport was foiled following the alertness of the sleuths, who promptly identified the
document as fake.
For the last few months, the sleuths of both Kolkata and West Bengal police have started crackdown operations against racketeers operating in the state who are involved in arranging fake Indian identity documents, including Indian passports, for illegal
Bangladeshi infiltrators.