The Immigration sleuths on Thursday took a person into custody with a forged passport at the Cochin International Airport, Nedumbassery. The arrested identified as Riyas Sabu, 35, of Cheloor Padikara, near Guruvayur, was later handed over to the Nedumbassery police.
The seized passport was issued in the name of Nelson Sajekumar of Thiruvananthapuram and had a photograph of Riyas pasted using some chemical. Riyas arrived in a flight of Ethihad Airways from Riyadh, said an offical of Immigration wing in CIAL.
On interrogation, Riyas submitted that he had lost his passport a few years ago and a forged one was obtained with the assistance of a Pakistani national.
“Riyas, a driver in Riyadh for the last seven years, was not properly paid by the organisation, it is learnt. A few years ago he lost the passport due to which he could not return home. One of his room mates, a Pakistani citizen advised him to forge a passport to return home. Thus Riyas gave two passport-sized photographs and some money for getting a fake passport,” the official said.
The immigration wing suspect the hand of a Dubai-based racket, involved in several passport forgery cases, behind the incident. In Dubai passport forgery cases are on a high. Recently, the enforcement agencies busted a sex racket which had brought 120 girls from various parts of the country to Dubai.
The Immigration wing which is now supervised by the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has intensified its inspection following reports of fake passport rackets operating in Dubai. “Now we have made the checking strict in the three airports of the state. The direction had been given that the passports of the people coming from the Gulf countries must be cross-checked so that people with fake passports won’t go scot free,” the official said.
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