The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed the first supplementary chargesheet against Pakistan national Azad Hussain alias Azad Mallik alias Ahammed Hossain Azad, and his Indian accomplice Indubhushan Haldar alias Dullal in connection with a case pertaining to an alleged racket of illegally obtaining Indian documents for Bangladeshi nationals in West Bengal, officials said on Tuesday.
The ED said in a statement that it filed a supplementary chargesheet in the case on December 11 before a special PMLA court in Kolkata and named Haldar and four others as accused. The special court located at Bichar Bhavan in Kolkata has issued notice upon the accused persons, the statement said.
The ED probe, launched on an FIR registered against Hussain, revealed the accused was living in India under the assumed identity of Azad Mallik and in connivance with Haldar, was fraudulently obtaining Indian identity documents for illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in lieu of money. Subsequently, Husssain was arrested on April 15 while Haldar was arrested on October 13. Both are currently in judicial custody.
According to officials, ED conducted searches at premises linked with Hussain and seized incriminating documents and records, showing he procured multiple Indian identity documents such as Aadhaar card, PAN card, and passport using forged information with the help of his accomplices. He is also accused of operating a hawala network to facilitate illegal cross-border remittances between India and Bangladesh, collecting payments in cash and UPI, before transferring equivalent amounts to Bangladesh using platforms like bKash.
Hussain referred Bangladeshi clients to Haldar and the duo would charge Rs 50,000 each for making Indian documents, including passports, and processed 300-400 such applications of illegal Bangladeshis in India, ED officials said.
The ED said there were 29 passport applications in which Haldar had submitted copies of ITR and some applications contained “several discrepancies beyond imagination”, underlining the fact that Indian IDs were issued for the Bangladeshis using “fabricated” documents.
In one instance, according to the agency, two brothers had furnished their dates of birth in the passport application form as 1st January 1988 and 1st April 1988, respectively – a gap of only three months, which is biologically impossible.
“In another instance, two brothers have dates of birth as 24.10.1975 and 24.05.1976 respectively, a gap of only seven months, which is again dubious,” the ED said in a statement.
The agency also found that a local Full Fledged Money Changer (FFMC) permitted Hussain to operate the forex counter despite being aware of his non-Indian identity. Hussain used to sell forex in public without any supporting documents for a commission, the ED said.
For maintaining the documentation as per the RBI guidelines, they used to show fake, bogus sales in the name of several individual entities by using their documents without their knowledge and consent, ED said.
Large sums of money, exceeding Rs 80 crore, were deposited into the company’s bank accounts under the guise of foreign currency sales to multiple customers, ED said, adding the probe has revealed that these transactions involved forged documents, fake cash memos, and unauthorised use of individual identities of numerous customers.
Earlier, a chargesheet, under Section 44 read with section 45 of the PMLA was filed against Hussain on June 13.