Following the revelation that two flyers in the Malaysian Airlines MH 370, which mysteriously disappeared on March 8, were holding bogus passports, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has decided to look into every fraud passport case they come across to check antecedents of the culprits involved.
"We will now be checking antecedents of those involved in bogus passport cases in Mumbai. We would be checking if the people involved have any terror link," said Himanshu Roy, additional director general of police, Maharashtra ATS.
However, statistics provided by the Mumbai Police revealed that cases of fraud passports have come down drastically in the past three years. In 2011, 357 passport fraud cases were registered and 417 persons were arrested; in the following year, 228 cases were registered and 266 were arrested. In 2013, only 103 cases were registered in the city and 143 persons arrested.
According to the crime branch sources, a major reason for the drop in such cases is that the police have been working in close coordination with some of the consulates where demand for visas is high. "In several cases that we detected, we found that passports were mainly forged to seek visas for Western countries, especially the United States. We then alerted several consulates to closely inspect suspicious passports and alert the police if they find anything amiss. The response from consulates has been very good," said a crime branch officer.
He added that most of the forgers are based in Mumbai. "While people seek visas for gulf countries for jobs, the craze to secure visas for Western countries is mainly for settling down with family members.
There has been a full-fledged racket wherein customers get in touch with agents and get bogus passports made. In some cases, the agents have been found working in connivance with airport officials to ensure a passenger is made to travel abroad on bogus passport without any hurdle," the officer said.
Another reason which the police cited for the decrease in such cases was a massive crackdown on the agents who were involved in the bogus passport racket. "We had collected information about the agents involved in passport fraud cases and had drawn a list of their names. Following this, a crackdown was started. The third reason is better security features on our passports and digitisation," the officer said.
Cases registered Cases detected Persons arrested
2011 357 357 417
2012 228 228 266
2013 103 103 143
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