On March 15, a story appeared in a non-descript Bangladeshi website ‘revealing’ that ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s cousin Sheikh Salahuddin Jewel had procured an Indian Aadhar card alongside possessing a National Identity Card issued by the authorities of his country of origin.
Northeast News has been able to establish that the ‘Aadhar card’ purported to have been issued in Sheikh Salahuddin’s name as an Indian identity document is itself fake.
This is how:
A genuine Aadhar card issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) carries bare essential information of an individual on the main face of the document. This information reflects the person’s name, date of birth and gender, printed in English and the local language, depending on which the person belongs to.
For instance, details related to a person from West Bengal, on the main face of the card, is printed in English and Bengali. Likewise, the detail related to a person from Delhi is printed in English and Hindi.
But the ‘Aadhar card’ as produced by the websites carries not only the person’s name, date of birth and gender but also the father’s name of ‘Bidhan Mallik (Sheikh Salahuddin) – ‘Mudindranath Mallik’.
More importantly, the reverse side of a genuine Aadhar card carries details related to the cardholder’s name, her/his father’s name and the local address where the card is despatched by the UIDAI.
Besides, a portion of the front-face of a genuine card carries the cardholder’s name, her/his father’s name, full residential address and mobile number.
A genuine Aadhar card also carries a message/slogan, printed horizontally at the bottom of the document, again in local scripts.
In Delhi or in other Hindi-speaking regions, this message says, ‘Mera Aadhar, Meri Pehchaan’. In Bengali, this would be ‘Aamar Aadhar, Aamar Parichay’.
The fake ‘Aadhar card’ in the name of Bidhan Mallik carries no such message or slogan. It says: ‘Aadhar – Sadharan Manusher Adhikar’.
However, in hundreds of thousands of cases involving genuine Aadhar cards, the message/slogan is printed in Hindi as ‘Aadhar – Aam Aadmi ka Adhikar’.
Now, an investigation by ATN, which is obliquely related to the Awami League party structure, revealed that ‘Aadhar number’ – 844205675726 – assigned to ‘Bidhan Mallik’ is not a valid number.
A similar procedure followed by Northeast News on the official https://tathya.uidai.gov.in/ website threw up the same result, suggesting that a fictitious ‘Aadhar number’ was used in Bidhan Mallik’s case.
Sheikh Jewel’s ‘Aadhar case’ – that he had changed his identity and turned a ‘Hindu’, allegedly after escaping to India in the aftermath of the events (in Bangladesh) of August 5, 2024 – was boldly shared by Bangladesh interim authority head Mohammad Yunus’ Press advisor Shafiqul Alam, a former journalist on March 15.
Subsequently, the post was deleted from Shafiqul Alam’s Facebook timeline.
