Gujarat man held for sending people abroad on fake passports, visas

The Surat unit of the Special Operation Group (SOG) and Gujarat Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) on Tuesday nabbed a person from Varachha area, alleged to be sending people abroad on fake passports and visas.

Aiding the Gujarat ATS, the Surat unit of the SOG raided the place of one Irfan Aiyub Ishmael Adam in Mota Varachha area of Surat and arrested him.

The ATS found copies of duplicate passports of Nepal, Armenia, Turkey, Malaysia, South Africa, Canada, the USA, Peru and Nigeria from his home. On inquiry, he confessed to providing bogus passports to many persons from various passport offices in Thane, Mumbai and Delhi.

The ATS, from his WhatsApp chats, found that he had good contacts at airports and had provisioned travels of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, from Pakistan to countries like South Africa, Canada, USA and Europe.

The ATS also found that he was earlier arrested five times for seven different crimes in Surat, Bharuch, Vadodara, Mumbai and Kolkata, with two arrests pending.

The accused was about to send two Surat women to Canada through various routes after obtaining bogus birth certificates for them.