Explained: Manipur's Discreet 'War' Against Fake Aadhaar, Voter ID Gangs

A huge racket of issuing fake Aadhaar and voter identity cards to illegal immigrants in Manipur has been busted, sources in the state government told NDTV.

A special police team has been tracking the racket and arresting several accused in recent times, amid the disruption caused by the ethnic violence, the sources said.

Investigators have released samples of the fake identity cards held by two Myanmar nationals, who were found living among locals in a district in Manipur. Both have been arrested.

"We have been working on dozens and dozens of cases. We have leads on many more and will follow them," an officer with direct knowledge of the matter told NDTV, requesting anonymity.

The officer declined to comment on the locations and timeline of the arrests, over concerns that illegal immigrants who are living with fake papers may go into hiding.

The fake Aadhaar and voter cards of the two arrested Myanmar nationals show Churachandpur district in their address. The officer, however, pointed out illegal immigrants can write any place they choose, depending on what the criminals who run the racket 'advise' them.

"We have found Aadhaar and voter papers with names of Indian cities. Imphal is also no exception. Many fake cards have names of many places. We will have to see whether these tend to cluster around certain areas," the officer said.

Sources in the state government told NDTV the areas in focus of the discreet, low-decibel operation to catch illegal immigrants who have managed to obtain fake Indian identity documents are mostly in southern Manipur. They, too, declined to give the exact locations on the grounds that the matter is sensitive amid the ethnic tensions in the state bordering Myanmar.

'Not Only About Manipur'

"The details will be shared at an appropriate time. We can't risk harming operational integrity. Who knows what more documents they managed to get using fake Aadhaar, voter identity cards? It is not only about Manipur. We see it as a threat to national security," one of the government sources said.

Fake identity document rackets busted in the last few years in Manipur were run by locals for quick money, a senior police officer involved in the ongoing operation told NDTV on phone from the state capital Imphal. "They were arrested from time to time whenever the police followed good leads. But we always felt many such cases would have gone unnoticed," the officer said.

The biometrics of refugees from Myanmar who fled from the fighting between the junta forces and pro-democracy insurgents are being recorded in Manipur. There is little to zero chance for these refugees to obtain fake papers; however, illegal immigrants who evade Indian authorities' efforts to collect their biometrics are the ones who reach out to the fake Aadhaar gangs, sources said.   

Government officials who are aware of the operation have indicated the state government and the police, this time, are focused on uncovering as many identity paper rackets as possible in the border state.

The last big arrest in a fake Aadhaar racket in Manipur - which was announced in public - was in May 2018, when a woman from Chennai and nine Myanmar nationals were arrested. Dozens more have been arrested with fake Indian papers after coming from Myanmar since then, and who provided them the fake documents went into the list of cases under monitoring.

Police investigations into fake Aadhaar gangs in Manipur go on for a long time as the local criminals often have links with 'agents' abroad who push illegal immigrants into India. "You make too much noise about it, and the trail will disappear," the officer involved in the current operation said.

Manipur is yet to see normalcy since May 2023 when ethnic violence broke out between the valley-dominant Meitei community and the hill-dominant Kuki tribes. The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes (ST) category as they claim to be essentially and historically a tribe.

The Kuki tribes want a separate administration or "Kukiland" carved out of Manipur, a demand towards which the Kukis have been working to achieve for decades, citing the need for a homeland for the scattered tribes who share ethnic ties with tribes in neighbouring Mizoram and Myanmar's Chin State.

Over 220 have died and nearly 50,000 have been displaced.