International immigration racket busted at Delhi airport

Police said the passengers were identified as Bangladeshi nationals Deedar Hossain Holdar (33), Rana (26), Mohammad Hridoy Hossain (23) and Parvej Hossain (23), while the agents in Gujarat were identified as Bangladeshi national Apon (29) and Ankit Kumar Jha (24).

According to police, Apon had come to India 15 years ago and was in the business of procuring Indian documents for Bangladeshi citizens going to the UAE. Meanwhile, Ankit prepared biometrics for Aadhaar cards, having allegedly made 10-12 illegal ones.

Police said that on July 27, a complaint was received regarding four passengers going to Sharjah at the immigration counter. After their travel documents were scrutinised, their real identities were revealed – they had allegedly fraudulently obtained Indian passports from agents in Surat.

A case was then registered under IPC sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating/dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471 (using forged document as genuine) and 120b (criminal conspiracy), Passport Act Section 12 (offences and penalties) and Foreigners Act Section 14 (contravening provisions of the Act). The passengers were then arrested.

DCP (IGI Airport) Tanu Sharma said: “Using technical surveillance and secret informers, the agents were arrested from Valsad in Gujarat.

They revealed that they were in contact with two other agents from Kolkata for six years and worked with them in a syndicate to arrange Indian IDs for Bangladeshi citizens to go abroad and arranged documents to apply for Indian passports. One of them used to send money to two bank accounts held by Apon.”

Police said 13 mobile phones, five Indian passports, five PAN cards, seven Aadhaar cards held by the Bangladeshi nationals, eight SIM cards, two birth certificates and a passbook were recovered. They added that probe is on to catch the remaining accused.