Eighth arrest made in Bengal’s fake passport racket

Kolkata Police on Wednesday arrested another person in connection with the fake passport racket from Madanpur in West Bengal’s Nadia district.

With the arrest of Dhiren Ghosh, the total number of arrests in this connection has reached eight since December 15 last year.

Ghosh has been brought to Kolkata and presented before a court in the city.

Sources in the city police said that Ghosh had been arrested from his rented accommodation at Madanpur. Several incriminating documents have also been seized from his possession.

A source said that Ghosh was a close associate of Manoj Gupta, the kingpin of such a racket operating under the garb of a fake travel agency running from Behala in the southern outskirts of Kolkata, and the seventh person arrested on December 29 last year. “Our investigation officials received information about Ghosh’s involvement in the matter and his whereabouts by interrogating Gupta. Finally, we arrested Ghosh on Wednesday afternoon,” the source said.

Since December 15, West Bengal Police and Kolkata Police have arrested seven persons in connection with the fake passport racket.

The investigating officials have identified a pattern in the operations of such rackets engaged in arranging fake Indian passports for the illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators.

Any infiltrator illegally crossing over to the Indian territory, contacting the local agents and showing willingness to pay out hefty amounts for getting fake Indian identity documents are first provided with safe shelters at the different villages adjacent to the borders with Bangladesh in the state, both land and coastal.

Thereafter, the agents arrange for fake ration cards for them which are the first step for making other identity documents. By virtue of the fake ration cards, other identification documents like EPIC, PAN, and AADHAAR cards are acquired.

The last step is getting the fake passports on the basis of these other fake identity documents.

On the other hand, the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari, on Tuesday, addressed a public meeting at Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal defying the last-minute denial of police permission for the same earlier in the day.

The rally by Adhikari is being viewed as a counter to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s similar public meeting at the same place on Monday, the first such by her since the protest by local people there, especially women, flared up earlier this year against sexual harassment and illegal land grabbing by the local and now-suspended Trinamool Congress leader Sheikh Shahjahan and his associates.

Indo-Asian News Service