On Tuesday morning, traffic police found a suspicious licence on a person during a routine check in Putalisadak, Kathmandu. To confirm the licence’s validity, it was taken to the nearby traffic police office where it was found that the licence was indeed fake.

Soon, police arrested the fake licence owner, Dipak Blon, who hails from Sarlahi district. He was handed over to the Metropolitan Crime Division, Teku, for investigation.

Based on Blon’s statement, police also arrested five others—Kumar Tandukar of Lazimpat, Kathmandu; Mohan Yadav of Siraha; Ananta Gurung of Chuchepati, Kathmandu; Buddhi Bahadur Rokka of Kuleshwor, Kathmandu; and Ashok Karki of Bara—for forging driver’s licences.

“Upon interrogation, it was revealed that Blon had obtained the licence from Photo Concern, one of the oldest photo studios based in New Road,” said Senior Superintendent of Police Sahakul Thapa, chief at the Metropolitan Crime Division.

“We have arrested four staff members of the studio, one fake driving licence user, and one person from another studio. However, the owner and CEO of Photo Concern are yet to be arrested as they are not in the country at present,” said Thapa.

Police also confiscated cards, printers, and computers from the studio. “They were found charging Rs30,000 from people for making fake licences,” he added.

According to the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division, fake licences are mostly used by people who fail the licence test or those who want to go abroad since obtaining an original driving licence is full of hassles and a person may have to wait for up to a year to get one.

According to the Department of Transport Management, which prints driving licences, there are more than 600,000 applicants waiting for smart driving licences and they are receiving applications from around 7,000 new applicants every day.

Altogether, around 1.6 million people have applied for smart licences. However, the department has only been able to issue around 900,000 licences so far.

“Fake licences are not used much in the Valley, because they are easily detectable. We can easily trace the licence’s originality by seeing it and we can also confirm the licence’s validity by checking the licence number in our database,” said Senior Superintendent of Police, Bhim Dhakal, chief at Metropolitan Traffic Police Division.

“Preliminary investigation has revealed that Blon contacted Budhi Bahadur Rokka, owner of Ashish studio, to make a fake driving licence. Rokka used to design the licence in his own studio and then used to print it in Concern studio,” said Superintendent of Police at Metropolitan Crime Division, Ridhaya Thapa. “We have confiscated four licences, citizenships certificates of different people and Aadhar card of India from Ashish Studio while we seized printers, smart licence, college identity cards and one police identity card from Concern studio.”