A day after the Kolkata Police launched a major passport fraud investigation, the police on Tuesday night arrested a man, Dipankar Das from Becharam Chatterjee Street in the Parnasree Thana area in connection with the case. He was produced in the Alipore court on Wednesday, which remanded him to police custody till December 26.

The arrest comes amid the ongoing investigation, now taken up by the detective department,  after it was discovered that 73 Indian passports were allegedly issued to Bangladesh nationals using “forged documents”.

Police found forged income tax returns documents, seals of two state-owned banks, computers, printers during raids at Das’s premises .  “Authorities recovered photocopies of 36 Indian passports, along with Schengen and UK visas,” said an official.

As per sources, Das alone allegedly created 3,000 fake passports.

While the Kolkata Police is actively investigating the racket and its connections to other regions, authorities believe that 73 individuals have already traveled abroad using these fraudulent passports.

Four persons including Samaresh Biswas and his son, Ripon Biswas, believed to be the main conspirators along with two temporary post office employees, Deepak Mondal, and Tarakanath Sen, have already been arrested.

As per the investigation, a sophisticated operation was led by Biswas and his son Ripon, who allegedly created fake passports. They engaged two post office temporary workers, Tarakanath Sen and Deepak Mondal, to facilitate the acquisition of fake passports for Bangladeshi nationals.

The probe further reveals that Das was assigned to fabricate various documents  for obtaining fake passports, like income tax returns and other tax-related documents.