Kolkata: A 48-year-old man was arrested from his house at Hatiyara in New Town on charges of making fake identity cards. He was arrested on Tuesday night.
Ranjit Sharma was accused of making fake voters' identity cards, PAN cards, birth certificates, etc. in his house.
Police came to know that he was involved with the illegal activity for the past few years and recently, he had started making fake identity cards in his house itself.
Acting on a tip-off, a team of police officers led by sub-inspector Suryadipta Bhattacharya of New Town police station, conducted a raid at his house and caught him red-handed.
The accused was arrested and police have seized a huge number of fake voter identity cards, PAN cards and birth certificates from the house of the accused.
They have also recovered a lamination machine and rubber stamps of different government offices from the same place.
Police suspect that he is involved with a big racket, members of which are operating in different parts of the state. So, the police are considering it to be a major breakthrough and they will be interrogating Ranjit to get more information, which would help them arrest other members of the racket.
A police officer said that in a bid to befool people, the accused used to claim that he was authorised as an agent to provide identity cards and other documents on behalf of the government.
At the same time, police are also trying to ascertain whether he had helped any miscreants get fake documents after entering the country by crossing the porous Indo-Bangladesh border.
It may be mentioned that fake identify cards were found from the possession of some miscreants from a neighbouring country, when they were arrested by the state police a few weeks ago.