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Fake passport racket busted

LUCKNOW: A suspected case of human trafficking has surfaced here with the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police busting a racket in fake passports. Three persons allegedly involved in the nefarious trade have been arrested by the agency from a location in Lucknow. They belong to the State capital. The gang had been active for the past one year. The gang had floated a fake placement agency named Tanya Manpower Consultants and used to lure people through e-mail and telephone with the assurance of a placement in the Gulf countries.

The gang, which supplied passports along with the fake visa to applicants, charged Rs.20.000 to 50,000 for their “services”. Nearly 200 people had established contact with the gang, which was headed by Osama, a resident of Chowk area in the Old City. He is among the three persons arrested by the STF. The other two are Mohammad Sheebu and Mohammad Rizwan.

The money charged from the passport applicants was deposited in a Kanpur branch of the Bank of Baroda and the Shahnajaf Road branch of ING Vysya in Lucknow.

These bank accounts were in the name of Puneet Kumar Dixit and Kahkashan, the mother of Osama.

According to State Special Secretary (Home) Ashok Kumar Verma, 59 fake passports and 139 passport size photographs of men and women were seized from them. In addition, one laptop computer, four fake driving licences, four blank cheques, one blank ration card, a fake voter identity card, a photocopy of a visa form, two mobile phones, one Bajaj motorcycle and Rs. 14,270 in cash were also seized by the STF.

Mr. Verma said the gangsters had procured two bank loans of Rs.4 lakh from the Jankipuram branch of Allahabad Bank and Rs.14 lakh from HDFC Bank in Lucknow. The bank loans were taken under fictitious names, Hussain Ahmed Abbas and Noorjhehan. The bank loans were never returned. Interrogation revealed that the gang members made several rounds of some foreign embassies in New Delhi where they used to entice the applicants.

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