Chennai, May 31 (BPNS)
The elite ‘Q’ branch police of Tamil Nadu will investigate the fake passport racket cases in the state after three persons were arrested by police in Chennai.
The Police arrested Mohammed Sheikh Illyas (54) on May 20 and on interrogation he revealed the details of his accomplices, N. Shivakumar (41) of Tiruvattiyur and M. Mohammed Bukhari (42) of Royapetah in Chennai.
The Tamil Nadu police have arrested the three following tip-off from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI). Police said that Illyas was the kingpin of the gang and has been running the racket for the past fifteen years.
The DRI stumbled upon the passport racket after Illyas was arrested in Chennai airport for smuggling gold and on examining his passport it was found to be fake.
According to the police , Illyas used to collect expired passports at the rate of Rs 1500 to Rs 5000 and tore the used pages and replaced them with new pages. The ‘Q’ branch police are probing whether these people had supplied such fake passports to wanted terror groups and whether anti-nationals have traveled abroad using such fake passports.
The gang used to change the unique encrypted serial numbers using chemicals procured from online stores and then replace them with different numbers.
The ‘Q’ branch police, according to sources in the state police headquarters, would be probing the number of passports the gang had made in recent years. Interrogation of the three some have already given police several inputs regarding the agents and sub-agents employed by these people across Tamil Nadu.
The police are also probing the number of expired passports these groups have collected and those who have sold the passports. The ‘Q’ branch is probing the terror angle as well as the money raised by the group through dubious means to procure these expired passports.
Sources in the police told BPNS that the arrest of the three was only the tip of the iceberg and a detailed and micro-level probe is being conducted to bring all the culprits to book.
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