Hyderabad: 3 arrested for cloning fingerprints of college faculty

The Hyderabad task force police on Wednesday busted a gang and arrested three people for cloning fingerprints of faculty members of various educational institutions.

Briefing press about the arrests, Anjani Kumar, Commissioner of Police, Hyderabad city said, "The Commissioner's Task Force, East Zone Team, Hyderabad city has apprehended three persons who were involved in illegal preparation and selling of cloned fingerprints to faculty members of various educational institutions and tweaking the online biometric attendance illegally."

"During the interrogation, one of the accused Ramakrishna confessed that he is pursuing regular Ph.D. and simultaneously working as an Associate Professor at SCET, West Godavari District. Another accused Sriram Prasad is an engineering graduate who previously worked as an Administrative Officer in an Engineering College," the police official added. The third accused has been found to be working as a Vice-Principal of an Institution.

The arrested trio was running a business of cloning and selling fake fingerprints to subvert the mandatory biometric online attendance system introduced by Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) officials and government of Telangana.

As per details, Ramakrishna designed a technique of cloning fingerprints with the help of internet and. He met Sriram Prasad who requested him to prepare cloned fingerprints for the staff of few colleges. Prasad later contacted different institutes to get orders for more fingerprint cloning.

They used to charge Rs.4,000 for each cloned fingerprint.