The investigation has not yet been able to pinpoint the exact number of passports issued or the officials involved in the racket. A DNA Special
NEW DELHI: At least two top aides of Dawood Ibrahim and several members of Mumbai’s underworld have obtained emergency passports through fraudulent means from the Indian consulate in Dubai and have escaped to Pakistan.
DNA has learnt from its sources that this breach of national security is being investigated by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s external intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau (IB), and the external affairs ministry.
But intelligence sources said the investigation has not yet been able to pinpoint the exact number of emergency passports issued or all the officials involved in the racket.
“Rajasthan police officer Hanumant Singh, who was posted in the Dubai consulate, is being interrogated in New Delhi by the IB and other agencies,” a senior IB officer told DNA. “During his interrogation he has named at least four officials of the Dubai consulate general.”
Another intelligence source said that among the four named is a former consul-general in Dubai who is now in India. “RAW had initially given the consul-general, who is a RAW official, a clean chit,” the source said. But after Singh’s revelations, further investigations are under way.
According to officials, the modus operandi was deviously simple. After obtaining tatkal passports valid for one year from Mumbai, the underworld operatives would fly into Dubai.
“Once there, they would obtain regular Indian passports. On the new passports some obtained visas for Pakistan too,” an official involved in the investigation told DNA.
The investigators have also uncovered several women who obtained passports in similar fashion. “Some of these women are linked to Mumbai’s underworld and could be involved in the flesh trade in Pakistan,” said the official.
Asked about the allegations made by Hanumant Singh, the external affairs ministry, in a terse statement, said, “Certain allegations against him pertaining to his tenure in Dubai have been brought to our notice. These are being looked into.”
This is not the first time Indian diplomats have been found to have helped people obtain emergency passports and visas using fraudulent means. In 2003 Scotland Yard exposed one such racket in Britain involving several Indians, including an attaché, following which the consular section in Britain was overhauled.
A few years ago the Central Bureau of Investigation had probed another such case in Tanzania where a senior diplomat in charge of the consular division and his subordinates allegedly perpetrated a fraud running into several thousand dollars by issuing long-term Indian visas.
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