Wage scam in GHMC: 2 Amberpet sanitation supervisors held for stealing wages using fingerprint clones

Hyderabad: Acting on a tipoff the sleuths of Task Force, Central Zone team busted a fingerprint cloning racket on Friday and apprehended two GHMC sanitation field assistants of the Amberpet Division, Hyderabad, who were pocketing the wages of absent sanitation workers.

For the crimes they allegedly committed for over two years, the loss to GHMC is said to be around Rs 86 lakhs. The accused have been identified as P Shivaiah Umesh (40) and J Shivaram (40). Both are sanitation field assistants in Circle-XVI in Amberpet.

They were illegally claiming salaries of absent sanitation workers by using workers' fingerprint clones. The two were allegedly using the candle wax used by sanitation workers to give their thumb impressions. They would use the wax to prepare a fingerprint clone by using MSeal and Fevicol or dendrite glue or wax which would create a synthetic thumb impression.

The officials also seized 31 machines for cloning prints/thumb impressions and two biometric attendance devices.

Learned about cloning fingerprints through YouTube

As per case details, Shivaiah Umesh and Shivaram have been working under GHMC Circle-XVI, Amberpet Division in Hyderabad as sanitary field assistants (SFA) on a contract basis through Rupesh Educational Society for the last two years.

They supervised sanitation workers and recorded daily attendance through GHMC’s biometric devices. The devices contain details of sanitation workers and their attendance gets marked through thumb impression by the devices.

Soon, they hatched a plan to illegally claim the wages of absent sanitation workers by cloning their thumb impressions. Per their plan, they prepared fake fingerprints by watching the process on YouTube.

How did they clone fingerprints?

They eventually collected 35 thumb impressions of sanitation workers out of which 21 workers were working under Shivaiah Umesh and the remaining 14 workers were working under Shivaram with whom they had an understanding to share the wages.

It was soon noticed that the attendance of several workers who were not physically attending the duties was being marked regularly. The accused persons made the sanitation workers press their thumbs on a layer of candle wax and then poured Fevicol on it to capture the print. The layer of gum, containing the fingerprint of the worker, was pressed against the biometric scanner to record the attendance of the absentee.

The accused persons revealed that for the last two years, they have been illegally pocketing the wages of at least 20 sanitation workers daily who are absent for each shift, causing a loss to the GHMC of approximately Rs 3.60 lakhs per month and Rs 43.20 lakhs for 12 months. The total loss to the taxpayers’ money come to around Rs 86.40 lakhs for two years. There are about 900 SFAs in 30 GHMC Circles in Hyderabad and about 24,000 sweepers/public health workers under these SFAs.

A case under sections 467, 468, 471, 419, 420, and 409 IPC was registered at Amberpet PS and the investigation is on.