Cops bust fingerprint cloning racket; 2 GHMC sanitation supervisors held

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Commissioner Task Force, Central Zone team busted a fingerprint cloning racket and apprehended two Sanitation Field Assistants (SFA) of GHMC, Circle-XVI, Amberpet division. They were illegally claiming the salaries of absent sanitation workers by using their cloned finger prints. The accused persons were P Shivaiah Umesh (40) and J Shivaram (40), both SFA GHMC employees in Circle XVI, Amberpet. They were hired on a contract basis through Rupesh Educational Society for the last two years. The police seized 31 cloning prints/thumb impressions, and two biometric attendance devices. According to the police, the sanitation workers press their thumbs on a layer of candle wax, cloning duplicate finger prints by using M-Seal, fevicol, or dendrite glue or wax, thereby making a synthetic thumb impression.

The police said they have been supervising sanitation workers and recording their daily attendance through biometric devices that are allotted by GHMC authorities to them. The device contains details of sanitation workers, and their attendance is marked through a thumb impression of the device.

They hatched a plan to illegally claim the wages of sanitation workers who were absent by cloning their thumb impressions. As per their plan, they prepared the said fake finger prints by watching the process through YouTube, based on that the accused persons collected 35 thumb impressions of sanitation workers, out of which 21 are working under Shivaiah Umesh and the remaining 14 are working under Shivaram, with whom they had an understanding to share the wages. Several workers were not physically attending duties, but their attendance was being marked regularly. .

They have been doing illegal work for the past two years, and every day, 20 sanitation workers are absent for each shift, causing the GHMC department to lose approximately Rs 3.60 lakh per month, Rs 43.20 lakh for 12 months, and Rs 86.40 lakh for two years. There are about 900 SFAs in 30 GHMC circles in Hyderabad, and about 24,000 sweepers/public health workers are working under the above SFAs.