The Bombay High Court has ruled that an Aadhaar card, PAN card or voter’s identity card cannot be considered proof of a person’s nationality. This is not a mere technicality but a reaffirmation of a basic legal principle: no forged or fake document has legal validity and, therefore, cannot be relied upon to prove name, age, residence, land ownership or, most crucially, citizenship.

The case in question is unusual. A Mumbai resident, now in police custody for allegedly staying in India illegally, has produced all the above documents, besides a passport, to claim that he is an Indian national. The police, however, maintain that he is a Bangladeshi citizen who crossed the border unlawfully and has been living in........

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