Former Kolkata Police SI held for role in fake passport racket
Times of India | 5 January 2025
12 Kolkata: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the case in which passports were issued to Bangladeshi nationals using Indian documents on Friday night arrested a just-retired sub-inspector of Kolkata Police. The former cop was found to have a direct connection with the passport forgery racket.
This arrest, the ninth overall, is the first in which an officer directly involved with the verification process was nabbed. "A raid was conducted under Ashok Nagar PS at Habra and one of the key accused, Abdul Hai (61), a former SI attached to the Passport Section, SCO, was arrested around 11.45 pm on Friday from his residence," said Rupesh Kumar, Joint CP (crime & traffic). The accused was produced at the CJM Court in Alipore and taken into police custody for 14 days.
Alipore police court public prosecutor Sourin Ghosal submitted in court that the accused was working for six years with the SCO. "We have found multiple monetary transactions between one of the accused presently in our custody with the former cop," said Ghosal. Sources within the detective department revealed that Hai allegedly facilitated the issuance of no-objection certificates for as many as 51 questionable passports in collaboration with another colleague.
"Initial investigation suggests that Hai charged approximately Rs 15,000-25,000 per passport and maintained close connections with other accused, particularly Samarish Biswas, one of the masterminds," said a senior police official requesting anonymity, adding that the probe has already exposed a sophisticated network operating under the guise of a travel agency in Behala Sakherbazar.
"We have identified approximately 150 forged passports so far, of which 52 were directly handled by Hai during his tenure. Seventy-three of these passport holders might have managed to travel abroad," the official added. Sources stated that during the investigation, a police officer's mobile phone was seized. Lalbazar indicated that at least one more police officer from Kolkata Police is under scrutiny.