The tragedy in Mangalore that killed 158 passengers on board an Air India flight on Saturday has brought to light a major fake passport and visa racket operating via travel agencies.
Officials have detected that 12 passengers who travelled in the aircraft had secured passports from the Kozhikode Passport Office through fraudulent means, thereby making matters worse in the identification of the deceased and their insurance claims.
A fake passport industry has been flourishing in the Gulf with links in Kerala, particularly in Kasaragod district, for more than two decades. In local parlance it is known as the “Kasaragod embassy” that provides forged passports, visas and travel documents to unemployed youth to secure jobs in the Gulf. Trafficking of women is also done via manpower recruitment agencies, Immigration officials said.
The parallel racket in the Gulf helps expatriates stranded in these nations to return to the State after being ill-treated by employers. The beneficiaries will have to pay a fee of 3,000 to 10,000 dirham to obtain forged passports. This happens when employers in the Gulf confiscate the passport of workers on their arrival.
Some job-seekers from Kerala are driven to such situations in the Gulf where they find no alternative but to sell their passports to members of the racket. “A passport with at least some months of validity fetches up to Rs.25,000 in Saudi Arabia,” said Kammu Kutty, an expatriate who was once detained by the Indian emigration authorities.
When some people sell their passports, the documents of some others are stolen or robbed by Malayali gangs.
Many youngsters reaching Mecca on Umra pilgrimage still continue to go underground by foregoing their passports.
“Some victims caught at the airport had told us that they paid 5,000 riyal or dirham to get a passport to travel back home,” said K. Salim, Emigration Dy. SP, Calicut International Airport, Karipur.
Photos substituted
Impersonation and photo substitution are the illegal means adopted. “These days we have groups replacing the entire jacket of the passport and photographs. Still, a person from north Malabar travelling on a fake passport can be easily identified,” said Mr. Salim.
In some cases, people with similar looks and features were found to be travelling on old passports with just a few months' validity remaining. According to emigration officers, such cases are difficult to detect.
The number of those travelling via the Mangalore airport to the Gulf has increased in recent times following stringent measures adopted by Immigration officials at the Calicut airport. At least 40 persons were arrested at the airport till May this year for travelling with forged passports.
Mr. Salim said action was sought against nearly 300 persons for suspected cases of tampering with passports.
The number of persons arrested on charge of possessing fake passport was 40 in 2009 and 52 in 2008. A majority of the cases were from Kasaragod district, he said.
Normally, cases are handed over to the Crime Detachment Cell or the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department.
One of the major cases is making a forged passport (the same mechanism adopted in printing counterfeit currency notes). More than two years ago, a Kasaragod native was arrested with 31 Indian passports at the Calicut airport.
Kozhikode Passport Officer K.P. Madhusoodanan said random checks were done at the office even after the police verification. But it would be a Herculean task to further verify the documents as the office catering to districts of Kasaragod, Kannur, Kozhikode and Malappuram obtained on average 17,000 to 18,000 applications a month.
Incidentally, the police arrested a Pakistani national and Al-Badr militant Mohammed Fahad for securing an Indian passport via a travel agency from the Kozhikode Passport Office four years ago.
