ED files chargesheet against Pak man who made Indian govt IDs for Bangaldeshis in Kolkata

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate has filed a chargesheet under the anti-money laundering law against a Pakistani man, living as an Indian in Kolkata, after illegally procuring as many as five vital government IDs including Aadhaar, voter card and passport.

He was laundering funds by making "fake" Indian IDs for Bangladeshis who came here and through other illegal activities like hawala, the federal probe agency said in a statement on Monday.

The ED said it has submitted the prosecution complaint against the man named Ajad Mallik alias Ahammed Hossain Azad and Azad Hossain before a special Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) court in Kolkata on June 13.

The court has taken cognisance against the "Pakistani national" and fixed a date for hearing, it said.

The ED, which carried out raids in this case in April, had then said in a press statement that Mallik was a Bangladeshi national. It arrested Mallik under the anti-money laundering law and the probe brought to light that he was indeed a Pakistani national.

The ED case stems from a West Bengal Police FIR against Mallik and unidentified others for violation of the Foreigners Act of 1946.

"Probe found that the man was a Pakistani national illegally living in India," the ED statement said.

"A Pakistani driving licence dating back to 1994 was recovered from his mobile phone bearing the name Azad Hossain and featuring the photograph of Ajad Mallik alias Ahammed Hossain Azad. It listed his father's name as Mumtaz-Ul-Haque and a permanent address in Pakistan," the ED said.

It said the driving licence recorded his date of birth as 14.08.1971 and it was issued by the Licensing Authority in Hyderabad, Pakistan.

In order to "conceal" his true identity, the ED said, the man adopted the alias "Ajad Mallik" and procured multiple Indian identity documents like Aadhaar, PAN (permanent account number issued by the income-tax department) card, driving license, voter ID and passport by submitting "forged" and "fabricated" documents, as per the ED.

The agency found that the man operated a "hawala" network to facilitate illegal cross-border remittances between India and Bangladesh, collecting payments in cash and UPI, before transferring equivalent amounts to Bangladesh using platforms like 'Bkash', an online financial transaction platform of Bangladesh.

"He was also involved in illegal money transfers and document forgery and was actively involved in facilitating the preparation of visas and passports for Bangladeshi nationals seeking to travel to countries like Dubai, Cambodia and Malaysia," the ED said.

The Pakistani man collected payments in Bangladeshi Taka, US Dollar, and Indian Rupee and deposited these amounts into his own bank account or transferred them to the accounts of associates engaged in fraudulent visa or passport processing, the ED alleged.

He played a "significant" role in "fraudulent" activities carried out at certain forex changers (full-fledged money changers) based in Kolkata, in which "huge" cash deposits were declared as proceeds from legitimate foreign currency sales to customers but were actually "proceeds of crime" linked to "unlawful" activities including the creation of "fake" Indian identities for Bangladeshis to obtain passports, the ED said.

The ED had said in April that the man has two sons -- Osama Bin Azad and Omar Faruk -- and his wife Maymuna Akhter, residing in Bangladesh and are citizens of that country. It said the man "frequently" visited Bangladesh to meet his family.