Ghaziabad: Police have unearthed a well-oiled racket that allegedly helped people obtain original passports with fake documents, sidestepping multiple checks with the help of middlemen, cops and a postman.
Five persons linked to the racket were arrested on Sunday from various locations in Delhi and Bhojpur in Ghaziabad. Vivek Gandhi (35) of Qutub Vihar in Delhi; Prakash Subba (61) of Chattarpur, Delhi; Arun Kumar (32) of Meerut; and a mother-son duo, Satwant Kaur (61) and Amandeep Singh (19), from Tilak Nagar in West Delhi were picked up by cops. According to police, Gandhi and Subba work as agents outside the Delhi passport office, while Arun is a postman at Modinagar post office.
Deepak Kumar, a constable accused of taking bribes to skip the police verification process, was suspended too.
The veil was lifted off the fraud after the passport office in Delhi flagged a cluster of suspicious applications — 24 passports linked to a single mobile number and having the same address — on Dec 12.
"All these 24 passports had the same address and phone number. When a police team reached there, they found only two persons living in the house. They were let go because they produced valid documents. This mean that the address on the remaining 22 passports was fake," said ACP (Modinagar) Amit Saxena.
This led cops to track the delivery trail of the passports. Police found that all these documents had been dispatched from Delhi to the same post-office in Bhojpur. The local postman was then questioned on where he had delivered the passports.
"About five months ago, Vivek Gandhi and Prakash Subba met him at the post-office. They told him that some of their passports would reach the post-office soon. But they strictly instructed him that these passports should not be sent to the addresses mentioned on them," the ACP said.
The agents allegedly offered Arun Rs 2,000 per passport to divert the deliveries. "Out of greed, Arun started doing this work," Saxena said.
But, how were the passport applications done?
According to police, Gandhi and Subba charged Rs 25,000 per passport and submitted forms on behalf of their customers online. They also forged crucial documents like Aadhaar cards, driving licences and even birth certificates to support the applications.
On the day of verification, the customers would reach the passport office in Delhi and submit the forged documents, which were made with such precision that it was difficult to tell the difference.
Once the passports were issued, they were all sent to the Bhojpur post-office as they had the same address on them. But instead of reaching the address, Arun diverted the documents.
Two such passports, police said, were issued to Satwant Kaur and Amandeep, who were arrested. The two told cops they wanted to go to Canada.
The racket has also brought the police verification process under investigation. "We are trying to find out how 22 passports linked to a single address bypassed police scrutiny. A constable from Bhojpur has been suspended, but there could be more cops involved in the racket," another officer said.
Police have written to the govt seeking cancellation of the passports and are checking with airport authorities to find out if any of these were used. They are also verifying the identities and backgrounds of those who obtained the passports.
An FIR was registered at Bhojpur police station against the two agents, the postman, 22 alleged beneficiaries and unknown persons under sections 61(2) (criminal conspiracy), 318(4) (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 336(3) (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 338 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc.), and 340(2) (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) of BNS, and relevant provisions of the IT Act.
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