Constable, postman arrested in passport racket

The Central division police arrested a constable and a postman on Tuesday for helping a few persons create passports with fake addresses.

According to police, Yellappa Banaje, a constable attached to Mico Layout police station and Dinesh, a postman with the BTM Layout post office, were arrested.

Recently, the police had arrested six persons, including two former employees of BangaloreOne, on the charge of preparing fake documents, including passports.

With BangaloreOne
The arrested are Saleem Sharif, 57, Muneer Ahmed, 45, Mohammad Ilyaz, 40, Mohammad Abdullah, 68, Siddaraju, 40 and Naveen, 21. Siddaraju and Naveen had earlier worked with BangaloreOne.

“During interrogation of the arrested persons, it was revealed that most of the fake passports were cleared from Mico Layout police station. They enquired with the police station and found that Banaje was in charge of the passport verification process. It was found that the constable had done the verification process of Anwar Hassan, an accused in the Times Bar and Restaurant shootout case,” said a senior police officer.

“Dinesh used to deliver the passports, despite the addresses being incorrect on them. They both are being interrogated to ascertain their links with the accused in the Times Bar shootout case. It is unusual why the constable did not verify the passport application. The accused, who got SMSes saying that the passports were sent for delivery, got in touch with Dinesh and got the passports from him,” the officer said.

Pratap Reddy, Additional Commissioner of Police (west division), said, “Investigations are on to check if other policemen are involved in the scam. All passports processed by Banaje will be scrutinised again.”

Shot at
The passport racket came to light when the Ashoknagar police interrogated Hassan, who along with his associates opened fire at Chetan, one of the owners of Times Bar, in August. Chetan had escaped with injuries.