Bangladeshi man, Indian agent held for running immigration racket

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) on Wednesday arrested a Bangladesh national and an Indian agent for allegedly forging documents to help Bangladeshis obtain Indian passports and citizenship.The main accused, Mohamand Didarul Alam alias Rana Sarkar, a native of Kishoreganj district in Bangladesh, illegally entered India in 2012, the ATS officials said. He settled in the Narol area of the city and began operating a shop named VIP Mobile and Money Transfer. Using forged documents, he obtained an Indian passport in 2017. Since 2018, he has been helping other Bangladeshis secure Indian IDs, said an official statement from the Gujarat ATS.Acting on a tip-off, a team of the Gujarat ATS raided Alam's shop and found forged Aadhaar cards, PAN cards, voter IDs, a Bangladeshi ID card, a labour card, and a Bank of Baroda passbook.The ATS statement said that Rana confessed to working with Robiul Islam and the Indian agent Soheb Mohammad Qureshi of Al Quraish Enterprise to forge documents for 17 Bangladesh nationals. The group also submitted online passport applications for nine more.Further investigation at Soheb Qureshi's shop uncovered 22 fake certificates used to generate Aadhaar numbers and more than 300 fake document templates, including PAN cards and birth certificates. Cops seized computers and laptops used by the accused to forge documents, according to the ATS statement.According to ATS, the fake documents enable fraud and pose significant threats to national security. Such illegal activities could aid terrorism, espionage, smuggling, and unauthorised immigration.Gujarat police stated that this crackdown was part of an ongoing campaign to detect and remove illegal immigrants and their local facilitators. Legal proceedings are underway against Alam and Qureshi under relevant sections of the BNS Act and Passport Act.