Several top ranking officers of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) have helped terrorists and other miscreants obtain fake national identity cards of Pakistan, reveals a report shared by the country’s premier intelligence agency with the NADRA chairman. In the report, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) listed 40 officials who have been involved in issuance of fake national identity cards. According to the ISI report — a copy of which is available with The Express Tribune — the agency, after a comprehensive intelligence scrutiny as part of its counter-terror operations, found many NADRA officials involved in facilitating attempts by terrorists and miscreants to obtain fake identity cards. The scrutiny was carried out after the law enforcement agencies recovered Pakistani passports and computerised national identity cards (CNICs) in possession of a number of local and foreign terrorists they killed or apprehended as part of the ongoing terror purge. According to the report, a senior al Qaeda leader who was killed by the Pakistani military last year had been in possession of a national identity card for overseas Pakistanis (NICOP). Up to 40 officials, some of them retired military officials are named as being involved in the issuance of fake CNICs. Whether they do this for monetary gain or because they sympathise with the extreme views of some of those who obtained fake IDs is unknown, but the fact that it happened at all is a significant breach in national security. The CNIC is regarded as the primary identifier, the single most reliable validation of the identity of an individual and the quality of their legal status in the country. The NADRA chairman has ordered an inquiry into this obvious security breach but the damage has been done, particularly to the reputation of NADRA, which can no longer claim to be above corruption. It is now revealed that elements within it were complicit in an illegal operation happening over years and involving dozens of NADRA officials, and reputations thus lost are very difficult to regain.
pk.shafaqna.com
