3 held for biometric attendance fraud in Telangana

: Three people including a vice-principal of a private college here were arrested on Wednesday in connection with alleged illegal sale of cloned fingerprints of faculty of various educational institutions for faking biometric attendance reports, police said.

Ramakrishna, pursuing regular PhD and simultaneously working as an associate professor in a college in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, along with his associate Sriram Prasad and the vice-principal Sudarshan Reddy were nabbed after police busted the gang involved in fingerprint cloning, they said.

The accused produced the false online biometric attendance to the officials of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), Hyderabad and cheated them, a release from Hyderabad Police said.

A total of 80 cloned fingerprints of faculty members of the private educational institute were recovered from the accused, it said.

In a bid to ensure attendance of faculty, a biometric online attendance system was launched by JNTU and the Telangana government.

Subsequently, it was linked to the JNTU server.

The accused collected the original fingerprint impressions of faculty members and prepared the cloned fingerprints using different chemicals for which they charged Rs 4,000.

Further investigation is on.