Bengal cops get clues about passport racket kingpin's network of Bangladeshi agents

Kolkata, Dec 21 West Bengal Police, probing the fake passport racket in the state, claimed to have got specific information about its kingpin Samaresh Biswa's network of Bangladeshi agents.

Sources said Biswas, who was arrested recently, used to operate with the help of people in different villages adjacent to West Bengal's international borders with Bangladesh and the South Asian country.

As per the preliminary investigation, the task of the agent's network operating from Bangladesh was to arrange for a safe but illegal crossover to the Indian territory through the border with West Bengal. Once that process was over, the network from the bordering villages on the West Bengal side took charge with the first task being arranging for safe houses for such infiltrators mainly in the villages adjacent to the international borders, both land and coastal.

Thereafter, based on the deals, fixed arrangements were made for their fake Indian identity documents starting with ration cards, followed by EPIC, PAN and AADHAAR cards and finally the passports.

In the course of interrogation, sources said, a person recently arrested in connection with such fake passport rackets, has admitted that the entire process involved a cost of Rs 2 lakh-Rs 3 lakh per infiltrator.

Five persons have been arrested in West Bengal in connection with the fake passport racket. Of the five arrested, two namely Dipankar Das and Deepak Mondal were contractual staff with Post Office Passport Seva Kendras (POPSKs).

Besides a section of POPSK staff, the sources said, several public distribution system (PDS) dealers in the state are also believed to be involved with such rackets, whose main task was to arrange for the fake ration cards for the infiltrators by which other fake identity documents were made.