Five members of a racket who issued birth registration certificates illegally to thousands of people, including Rohingyas, have been arrested, in what police said a matter of grave concern as criminals can continue committing crimes concealing their identities.

Two of the arrested persons, who are municipality and Union Parishad computer operators, used to access the birth registration portal using the credentials of the mayor, executive officer, chairman and secretary of the respective municipalities and Upazila Parishad to provide birth registration certificates.

Arrested Md Abdur Rashid works in Biral municipality in Dinajpur and Sohail Chandra in No. 10 Ranipukur UP in Biral. However, they said they have connections with some staffers at municipalities and UPs in Brahmanbaria, Kushtia and other areas.

The Cyber and Special Crime (South) unit of the Detective Branch (DB) under Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) arrested the five from Bagerhat, Narayanganj and Dinajpur on 13 February, Saifur Rahman Azad, additional deputy commissioner (ADC) at DB cyber unit, revealed this to the Daily Sun on Monday.

The arrestees said that they provided such birth registration certificates to local citizens as well as the Rohingya people of Cox’s Bazar by showing them as residents of Biral.

As Rohingya individuals are not citizens of Bangladesh and lack local citizenship documentation, they are unable to access various civic benefits. Consequently, many Rohingya individuals have resorted to obtaining fake Bangladeshi citizenship certificates, facilitated by the arrested accused, to gain access to these benefits.

The ADC said that an inspector of DB found two Facebook groups – NID Online Service and NID Help Desk Group – while doing cyber patrolling on 9 February. Suspecting their activities, the inspector traced their location and arrested them.

The three other arrestees are Shahidul Islam Munna, Rasel Khan and Mostafizur Rahman used to help the two computer operators find people who needed birth registration certificates illegally. Later, they shared their profits among themselves.

Two of them are students, while the third works in a garment factory. They became involved in the illegal issuance of birth registration certificates as they found it very lucrative. They charged Tk5,000-Tk30,000 for one certificate.

Md Shahidul Islam Munna and Md Russell Khan live in Bagerhat and Narayanganj respectively.

The police officer said many Rohingyas have become Bangladeshi citizens illegally. Besides, many criminals commit crimes by registering another birth certificate outside their locality to conceal their identity.

Apart from these, many fake passports have been issued using these birth registration certificates to avoid repaying bank loans and committing online crimes by deceiving the police.

ADC Saifur Rahman Azad said many notorious murderers, robbers and anti-state criminal gangs have been able to hide their identities and resumed crime under new identities.