Five Sri Lankans are among nine people arrested in a passport scam busted by the Bengaluru police.
Three of the arrested Indians are passport agents and one is a jobless software engineer.
According to police, the agents obtained Indian passports for Sri Lankans and rowdies by creating fake documents. Some of the rowdies have gone abroad on these fake passports while others have travelled overseas in the past.
One of them is a Chikkamagaluru man involved in 36 burglaries.
Bengaluru Police Commissioner C H Pratap Reddy said the middlemen forged identity and address proof documents and submitted them to the passport office along with the applications. They managed to clear the verification process and get passports for 50 people.
The alleged mastermind is Ameen Sait, a passport agent who was arrested six times for similar offences. The other suspects are Rakesh H, a software engineer, and H U Hyder and Mohammed Nawal, both middlemen from Mangaluru.
The arrested Sri Lankans are Selva alias Ravi Kumar, Manivelu, Shiju, Vishal Narayan and Nirosha.
A police team headed by Assistant Commissioner of Police (Jayanagar sub-division) K V Srinivas and inspectors Subramanya Swamy M L, Girish Naik and Manjunath arrested the gang.
Police said Rakesh started working for Sait after losing his job during the pandemic. He forged the voter’s ID, Aadhaar, driving licence and school transfer certificates.
In order to obtain passports for his clients, Sait would submit the documents to the passport office on their behalf. He charged Sri Lankans between Rs 50,000 and Rs 80,000 for each passport. The rowdies were charged Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh each.
Imposters
The middlemen also role-played as neighbours of passport aspirants and signed as witnesses during police verification.
The scam came to light when police officers from Pension Mohalla, Hassan, visited Basavanagudi police on October 19 seeking information about Sadique Pasha, who was wanted in over 36 burglaries. Pasha applied for a passport in 2020 in the name of Mohammed Karim.
On seeing Pasha’s photo, police realised that it was Karim whose passport verification was done on December 11, 2020. A police constable named Madhusudan J visited the address given by Karim. The applicant was present at the address.
Sait, Hyder and Nawal were present on the premises and told the constable that Karim had been residing at the address for the last three years.
The constable verified his criminal background from police records but since a forged name was used, a clearance report was submitted on the Passport Seva website. Police realised Pasha had faked his identity to get a passport.
A case was registered against Pasha, Sait, Nawal, and Hyder on a complaint from Madhusudhan.
Sri Lankans came to India in June and approached Sait through agents for passports. They intended to get jobs in West Asia on Indian passports because many countries are not issuing visas to Sri Lanka given the financial crisis in the island nation.
Based on an internal inquiry, DCP (South) P Krishnakant suspended constables Madhusudhan J and Vasanth Kumar for negligence during the verification of Pasha and others’ passport applications. A departmental enquiry is also underway.
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