West Bengal residents must wait for passports

Hyderabad: Those applying for passports in Hyderabad with identity proofs issued in West Bengal, will have to wait longer for police clearance, as the state police are sending the details of the applicants to be checked in their native state.  

This comes after three Bangladesh nationals, who got passports issued in Hyderabad, were detained and sent back from Dubai.

 The Telangana state police, who claimed they were verifying passports within a record time of four days, had not checked the background of the three Bangladesh nationals, who were sent back to India from Dubai in mid-December last year.

The passports were issued in Pet Basheerabad, a suburb of Hyderabad falling under the Cyberabad police commissionerate. Taken aback by the incident, the police are now sending the details of the applicants from West Bengal to the police there to check on their validity.

Ajay Chowdhury, 30, Shubro Barua, 30, and Avi Mukherjee, 24, were sent to Cochin from Dubai after immigration officials there suspected their identity. They came from Chittagong in Bangladesh and were not Indian citizens as their passports claimed.

Questioning by the Cochin police revealed that the three procured their passports from Pet Basheerabad, where they were living for one-and-a-half years.

The three had illegally entered India around 2016, crossing the border to Jalpaiguri, a town in West Bengal close to the Bangladesh border.

"Ajay, Shubro and Avi Mukherjee, were the three persons who got passports here (Hyderabad). They worked as drivers and stayed here for about 18 months. Their motive for leaving for abroad seems to be for seeking a livelihood. However, it is not yet clear if the names of the apprehended trio are original or they have changed the names while securing identification cards like Aadhaar card," said a senior police official from Cyberabad.

In November 2017, two members of Ansarullah Bangla Team, a terrorist organisation in Bangladesh associated with Al-Qaeda, were arrested by the Kolkata Special Task Force. The terrorists lived in Manneguda for over a year and worked in slaughter houses using fictitious names. The National Investigation Agency has registered a case and is investigating further.

In the recent case of the Bangladeshi nationals, original identification such as Aadhaar was issued in Jalpaiguri, so the Cyberabad police were not suspicious. The three men had also lived in one place in Hyderabad for 18 months so neighbours too did not suspect anything. As the three had no criminal background according to police records, they were given police clearance.

"Passport applications where the applicants are from West Bengal are now being verified carefully. The details of the applicant along with the submitted proofs are being sent o the police there for scrutiny, to find out if they are really natives of that place or if the identification was taken illegally," said another official.

The official said it is unclear how the Dubai police found out about the nativity of Ajay, Shubro and Avi. The documents pertaining to their arrest and deportation are yet to be received from Cochin police.

Hyderabad police has arrested several foreign nationals who have entered the country illegally and managed to get Indian passports.

In 2018 the Rachakonda police had booked 17 cases against Rohingya refugees and one case against a Bangladesh national and arrested 43 Rohingya refugees and three Bangladesh nationals for obtaining illegal documents and also seized 11 voter cards, 22 Aadhaar cards, four PAN cards, six passports, two driving licences and three other documents.

In 2017, two Bangladesh natives who lived in Pakistan for several years, and a Myanmar native were arrested by the Hyderabad central crime station police for obtaining Indian passports using forged documents. The illegal immigrants acquired the passports from the Regional Passport Office in Hyderabad, in connivance with special branch police officers, following which an assistant sub-inspector and a police constable were suspended.