Rohingya NID Scam: Latest arrestee remanded
A court in Chattogram yesterday put the personal secretary of Chattogram Election Commission (EC) office assistant Joynal on one-day police remand in a case filed with Kotwali police station on charge of helping Rohingya refugees obtain Bangladeshi National Identity (NID) cards with help of Election Commission staffers.
The court of metropolitan magistrate Mehnaz Rahman passed the remand order for Md Jafar alias Shwapan (38), after he was produced before the court.
Jafar was arrested by members of Counter Terrorism (CT) Division of Chattogram Metropolitan Police (CMP) from Ishwarganj under Mymensingh on Saturday night.
CT Inspector Sanjoy Sinha, Investigation Officer (IO) of the case, said, "In the Chattogram EC office, Jafar is known as the secretary of arrested office assistant Joynal."
"Jafar used to work for Joynal in 2015; he gathered Rohingyas who searched Bangladeshi NID and brought them to Joynal, through local 'brokers'," he added.
"For the work, Joynal used to pay Jafar around 30,000 Taka per month, "said Inspector Sinha.
According to CT sources, Jafar's came up after arrest of two Rohingya brokers Najib Ullah and Absar Ullah in April. During primary interrogation, Jafar said he got introduced to Joynal at the EC office when he went there to withdraw an NID card in 2015. Later Joynal and Jafar became good friends.
Jafar told investigators that he used to receive the Rohingya people from brokers Najib Ullah and Absar Ullah and took them to Joynal's residence to make Bangladeshi NID. From the house, Joynal took the fingerprints and photos of the refugees and later uploaded them to the NID server through the designated devices of EC, said sources.
The sources said Jafar mailed the printed NID documents and transferred money through Kazir Dewri SA Paribahan to another accused Satya Sundor Dey in Dhaka.
After the NID scam came to light, Jafar left his city's Bakalia residence and went to Mymensingh.
On September 15, 2019, the Anti-Corruption Commission found that several syndicates provided Bangladeshi NID cards to Rohingyas through forgery using official devices, in exchange of huge sums of money.
ACC said several laptops of EC -- directly connected to the NID server -- were stolen and the EC has no official data about the missing laptops yet.
Police and passport officials said some Rohingya refugees were making Bangladeshi passports using forged NID cards with the help of some locals and Rohingya brokers.
The Rohingyas were using fake names and addresses while applying for the identification documents. EC officials still cannot say exactly how many Rohingyas have secured the cards through illegal means.
After the incident, Double Mooring Thana Election Officer Pallabi Chakma filed the case accusing five people and several unknown people in connection with the forgery on September 17, 2019.
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