MUNTAKIM SAAD

Joynal Abedin alias Idrish, a former salesman of a jewelry shop in Dhaka’s Mirpur, managed to have six NID cards bearing his name with the help of an outsourced employee at the Election Commission’s NID wing.

A person having multiple national identity (NID) cards can easily secure several tax identification numbers, open multiple bank accounts, take out many bank loans, and even obtain multiple passports.

Joynal amassed crores of taka in connivance with some staffers of the NID wing, land registry office, and banks, said investigators of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

All these crimes came to the fore in the first week of April after the Detective Branch of police had arrested four people, including Joynal, 42, and Pallab Das, 36, an outsourced employee of the NID wing, from different areas in the capital.

On Friday, the CID arrested seven more members of the forgery racket, including two employees of a bank and a land office.

The ring embezzled about Tk 30 crores taken out of banks as loans, said the investigators.

“Some unscrupulous employees of the NID wing, the land registry office, banks and financial institutions are involved with the racket that amassed crores of taka,” CID chief Mohammad Ali Mia said yesterday.

Pallab Das was working at the NID wing in Rangpur. He would access the NID server to prepare NID cards using different numbers, but the cards would bear the same name and address. These fake cards were subsequently provided to Joynal in exchange for Tk 2-3 lakh for each. Joynal would use the cards to secure loans from different banks, according to investigators.

“Pallab either used a finger reversely or the toe to give impressions of fingerprints for preparing a new NID card,” Jewel Chakma, additional superintendent of police at the Cyber

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