The Hindu : Kerala News : Forging of Indian passports rampant in the Gulf

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 10, 2005

Kerala

Kerala

Forging of Indian passports rampant in the Gulf

G. Anand

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: : Forging of Indian passports, mainly by substituting the digitally imposed photographs, is becoming rampant in the Gulf, according to the State police.

In the past six months alone, the Emigration Authorities at the International Airport here detained 77 persons on the charge of using fake passports. Most of them were workers returning home after a stint in the Gulf.

The "identity thefts" came to light when Emigration officials who examined the passports found that the thin filament covering the digitally imposed photograph had been tampered with.

The filament has several hidden security features, which become evident only when examined under ultraviolet light.

The accused persons were arrested and remanded to judicial custody on the charge of forgery and violation of the Indian Passport Act.

In their statements to the police, the accused said that their sponsors in the Gulf had appropriated their original passports for different reasons.

Hence, they were forced to buy duplicate Indian passports for emergency visits to Kerala. Many of them had paid up to Rs. 35,000 for a fake passport.

The original holders of the passports were found to be persons hailing from Kasaragod, Kannur and Malappuram districts, according to the Crime Branch, which investigates all cases registered under the Indian Passport Act in Kerala.

The passports used for identity theft were mostly of unemployed youth who had gone to the Gulf on visit visas and had not returned home even after the expiry of their visa period, an official said. The entries in the passports used for identity theft showed that the original passport holder had taken Rs. 4.5 lakhs in dollars when he had gone to the Gulf.

"In most cases it was $2,000 in cash and the rest $8,000 as traveller's cheques," he said.

North Kerala link

The Crime Branch suspects that a network of Gulf-based Malayalis hailing from North Kerala is behind the passport duplication racket. The agency said the members of the network could have a stake in hawala operations in the State and also black market foreign currency dealings. Officials at the Protector of Emigrants (POE) here said emigrants who used fake passports to return to India were mostly persons cheated by unauthorised and sometimes by licensed recruiting agents as well.

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