AHMEDABAD: City crime branch arrested eight persons for their alleged involvement in a racket diverting subsidized foodgrains from ration shops of the public distribution system (PDS) to the open market for sale.
Those arrested were diverting the food grains by generating fake bills in the name of people who had not collected their monthly ration.
Crime branch officials said the accused were collecting details and names of people who had not collected rations using a special purpose-built software, Gamescan.
The cops said more arrests are likely to take place as this was a state-wide scam.
With the help of ration shop owners and middlemen they conspired to divert subsidized foodgrains to the open markets.
The accused allegedly used software to collect data of beneficiaries such as names, Aadhaar card numbers, ration card numbers, biometric details, and the username and password of the software used by ration shop owners, the official said.
“The software created by the accused helped gather data of beneficiaries, which they used to generate online bills of those who did not collect their monthly rations.
This way, they would show that the ration has been sold to beneficiaries, but would instead sell them in the open market,” said a senior official of the crime branch.
Based on a tip-off, the police first nabbed one Alpesh Thakkar, who contacted ration shop owners and got details of beneficiaries who had not collected their rations.
The police found an excel sheet on Thakkar’s mobile phone, which had details of such beneficiaries, username and password of ration shop owners and the shop code, a release from crime branch stated.
Further investigation led the police to Rafiq Manesiya, Javed Rangrej, Latif Manesiya, and Mustufa Manesiya, who were allegedly involved in supplying two software applications to ration shop owners to gather data on ration card holders, crime branch officials stated.
Police have arrested the creators of the software Gamescan, Kaushik Joshi and Deepak Thakor, and the supplier of Savedata software, Hitesh Chaudhary, all of whom are from Banaskantha district.