'Living hell' says techie whose Aadhaar card image was shared online

Image: Wikimedia Commons/PageImp

A copy of the Aadhaar card owned by 34-year-old Maharashtra techie Ameya Dhapre was uploaded online by miscreants years ago. The engineer from Girgaon had enrolled himself for Aadhaar back in 2012 itself, but his ordeals began three years later, in 2015 when cops came knocking at his door.

Cops from Pune’s Mundhva police station came looking for him after a woman lodged a harassment complaint with them. The woman was reportedly being troubled by a man over phone calls, and the number led the cops to Ameya since the harasser had used the former’s Aadhaar card details to get his KYC done.

An unsuspecting Ameya did not think much of this incident and refrained from filing any complaint thinking the matter has been solved, reported the Mumbai Mirror. However, within two years of this incident, when the techie tried opening a bank account in 2017, he was told that it wouldn’t be possible because his Aadhaar card has already been linked to another bank account.

This time he took more serious cognisance of the matter and wrote to the concerned bank authorities about a possible Aadhaar fraud. Suspicious, he decided to Google his name and was shocked to find out that a picture of his Aadhaar card had been shared by multiple websites.

The techie immediately contacted the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) after the discovery and an official complaint was finally lodged. The UIDAI authorities, however, told Ameya that it won’t be possible for them to change his Aadhaar number and the only way out would be to cancel his card.

However, Ameya was not willing to scrap his card altogether because it was linked to multiple accounts, as per UIDAI guidelines.

In the meantime, he reached out to the cybercrime division of the Mumbai Police to file a complaint and seek redressal.

Ameya says his life has become 'living hell' now. He keeps receiving two to three authentication-failure mails every day, alongside random calls and text messages, meaning people are still trying to use his Aadhaar coordinates for frauds.