The accused issued the death certificates for which they also received money. (File)
Five members of a gang have been arrested for allegedly issuing a fake death certificate of Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, a senior police officer said here on Friday.
Elaborating on the modus operandi, Additional Superintendent of Police (Operation) Tribhuvan Nath Tripathi said the gang, in collusion with a contractual employee in Lucknow's Swastha Bhavan, got hold of the login ID and password of a portal, created for issuing birth and death certificates, and issued the documents to people in exchange of money.
During interrogation, the accused revealed that they issued the death certificate of the Haryana Chief Minister after a person sent them his details on WhatsApp and gave money for it, the officer said during a press conference.
The police, however, did not clarify about the identity of the person who had allegedly asked the accused to issue the Chief Minister's death certificate or the motive behind the move.
The accused have been identified as Prashant Maurya, Monu Sharma alias Shivanand Sharma, Ansar Ahmed, Mohd Kaif Ansari and a contract worker named Yashwant, he said, adding that four laptops and seven mobile phones were seized from their possession.
Police said an FIR was registered and a probe launched after the data processing assistant in the Chief Medical Officer's (CMO) office (birth and death section) informed that the death certificate issued on February 2 in the name of Manohar Lal is fake.
During interrogation, the accused said Yashwant, who works as the state coordinator in the birth and death statistics section of Swasthya Bhavan in Lucknow, gave them the ID and password of the CRS portal created for issuing birth and death certificates, police said.
Yashwant also helped register the mobile number of the accused with the portal so that they could get OTP after logging in and issue birth and death certificates in exchange for money, police said.
The accused told police that on February 2, a person whom they did not know, sent them details of 'Manohar Lal, son of Harvansh Lal R/o 719 New Prem Nagar, Post Prem Nagar Karnal Haryana Pin- 132001' on WhatsApp, asking them to issue a death certificate, officials said.
The accused issued the death certificates for which they also received money, police said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)