Cyber police in Medininagar, Jharkhand, on Tuesday arrested a common services centre operator for tampering with the URL that generates voter identity cards after a complaint from the Election Commission of India.

Palamau superintendent of police Chandan Kumar Sinha confirming the arrest said: “We got an information from the ECI about attempt to generate fake voter ID cards and during course of investigation, we have nabbed Mukesh Kumar who has confessed that he was sent through WhatsApp an URL and a password number for logging in and making fake voter ID cards which resemble original ones.”

“We are trying to trace the person who used to send the link. We have come to know that the gang is based out of Uttar Pradesh,” the officer said.

Mukesh is a resident of Palamau and has been operating the centre for nearly two years.

The youth has been questioned by Palamau deputy commissioner Shashi Ranjan, deputy election officer Shailesh Kumar and Chainpur circle officer Sanjay Bakhla and Chainpur thana OC Uday Kumar Gupta.

Sources in the police informed that the network has links to Uttar Pradesh and the election commission has informed the Palamau district about administration about the operator trying to tamper with the URL for generating voter ID.

A source said that the ECI had given the URL to a company to make voter ID and the operators have tampered with it. The hacked link and code used are sent to the operators on WhatsApp for generating voter IDs.

Cyber police station in-charge inspector Deepak Kumar said Mukesh was picked from his house in Karso on Monday night.