Police arrested 10 suspected members of an organised gang involved in making fake National Identity (NID) cards of Bangladesh for the Rohingyas of Myanmar.  

They, including 5 data entry operators of the Bangladesh Election Commission, were all arrested from the Halishahar area of Chattogram city on Tuesday.

The arrestees were identified as Rohingya citizens Md Kamal Hossain alias Mohammad, 45, and Parvin Akter, 25; Nurul Absar, 28, who used to collect the ID cards on behalf of the Rohingyas; former school headmaster Shamsur Rahman, 60, and one Md Yeasin Arafat, 22; and data entry operators of the Election Commission Md Nur Nabi, 25, Md Mizanur Rahman, 23, Farhadul Islam, 28, Imon Das, 20, and Md Kamal, 42.

Muhammad Ali Hossain, deputy commissioner (West-Bandar) of Chattogram Metropolitan Police (CMP), disclosed details of the police operation during a press conference at his office on Wednesday.

Shamsur Rahman, the former headmaster of Pokkhali Government Primary School in Cox’s Bazar, was also an accused in two other cases filed for forgery of NID cards earlier.

The police were tipped off that Rohingya were being registered in the voter list of Bangladesh during an exercise to update the list at Halishahar Housing Estate High School on Tuesday.

Read: 15 EC staff involved in providing NIDs to Rohingyas: NID DG

“Following the information we conducted a drive at the school and arrested the 10 people with forms of NID card and birth registration,” he said.

Md Kamal and Parvin, as members of the community, worked to discreetly market the scheme among the displaced population from Myanmar.

Kamal was an NGO staffer in Cox’s Bazar and Parvin has actually been living in Bangladesh for the past 15 years, and even got married to a Bangladeshi earlier, said DC Hossain.

Nurul Absar and Shamsur Rahman were said to be the masterminds of the scam to target Rohingyas from their different camps in Cox’s Bazar and provide them with NID cards at Tk 1 lakh each.

The EC’s data entry operators got a share of Tk 5000 per NID, said DC Hossain, adding that two separate cases were filed accusing the 10 people with Halishahar police station in this connection.