Ajay Kumar By

PATNA: The capital city of Bihar seems to have become the brave new destination for desperate Bangladeshi nationals to procure an Indian passports, using forged documents for a price. Recently the city police arrested a Bangladeshi with fake documents. During interrogation, he confessed to paying money to touts to get his work done.

“We suspect an organised gang is using Patna as its main base for making fake Indian passports. A few days ago, three Bangladeshi citizens were caught using fake documents to obtain their passport,” said Patna SSP Manu Maharaj.

Patna police caught Abdul Mannan, a Bangladeshi national, who was trying to get an Indian passport through a tout on Thursday afternoon.

After a round of questioning, he confessed that he arrived in Patna via Kolkata on January 7 with the help of Noor Mohammed, an agent who is involved in the passport racket.

“Noor Mohammad provided him an Aadhar Card that shows his address as Takayapar in the Gondapur area of Nawada district. His father’s name on the card is Mohammed Moslem Ali. He also arranged a passbook from Corporation Bank’s Nawada branch,” said SSP.

Police also recovered a certificate bearing his name as a student who passed out from the Swami Vivekananda Secondary and Senior Secondary Open Education, Delhi, to facilitate his passport.

“Police have also discovered photographs of key locations like the Patna railway station and Mahavir temple from Mannan’s cell phone. The purpose behind taking the pictures is being investigated,” said Maharaj.

Mannan’s story is that of a hapless man frantically fleeing poverty in his country and travelling to India to get an Indian passport, which will enable him get a job abroad. “I came to India by road through Haridaspur on the Bengal-Bangladesh border and met Noor Mohammed who took me to Biharsharif in Nalanda district and put me up in a rented room. He didn’t allow me to venture outside,” said Mannan, who comes from the Naogaon district in Bangladesh.

“I paid him Rs 20,000 to him to get my work done” he added.

When asked why he needed an India passport, he said he said some countries like Libya prevent people with Bangladeshi passports from entering.

Three years back another Bangladshi named Mohammad Noorul Nabi Hasan was arrested in Patna, for trying to procure an Indian passport with the help of forged documents. He had confessed that he wanted to get Indian passport to travel to Saudi Arabia.

The police have got in touch with their counterparts in Kolkota and are investigating the possibility of organised gangs working to provide hapless Bangladeshis fake documents for passports. The cops do not rule out collusion between the touts and some passport office officials.