At least 6 arrested in passport racket scam
Darjeeling: Gautam Kumar Saha, senior Superintendent of Regional Passport Office along with five others, arrested for running a passport racket, were produced at the Special CBI Court in Gangtok, Sikkim on Monday. They have been remanded to CBI custody. Investigations are on. The next date of hearing is October 20.
The others arrested include agents Barun Rathore, Asim Rai, Dipu Chettri, along with Subrata Saha of Sushrutanagar, Siliguri and Uday Shankar Roy of Babupara, Naxalbari. Saha and Roy are the duo involved in creating forged documents.
On October 14, Gautam Kumar Saha who was posted at the Passport Seva Laghu Kendra (PSLK,) Gangtok, Sikkim on rotational basis, was arrested by the CBI from Siliguri. He was caught red-handed accepting Rs 190000 as bribe share from Dipu Chettri, an agent from Birpara Tea Garden, Jalpaiguri. Investigations led to Barun Rathore of Naxalbari and Sachin Rai of Bagdogra. Nationals from Nepal wanting to acquire Indian passports used to contact the duo who used to get forged documents like birth certificates, Aadhar, Voter ID cards through Saha and Roy. Then the passport applications used to prepared by them on behalf of the applicants against a hefty sum of money. The applications would be sent to PSLK, Gangtok and Post Office Passport Seva Kendra (POPSK), Darjeeling.
At the time of verification for cases processed through PSLK Gangtok and POPSK, Darjeeling, Rathore and Rai used to send the applicants to the PSLK and POPSK after obtaining an approval from officials who were hand-in -glove with them.
The passports used to be delivered by a postman from Bagdogra in person instead of speed post as all the addresses were false.
Rathore, a resident of Babupara, Pannighattamore, Naxalbari, Darjeeling is not new to this. “On 23 August 2015, he along with two others was arrested in a similar case relating to attempts of obtaining passports using forged identification and address proof documents,” stated Pankaj Prasad, APP, Darjeeling.
The judgment of the case was passed on 30.8.2023 whereby Rathore was acquitted as the hard disk seized was not examined by an expert, hence his connection with the forged documents could not be established. Another Sunny Sharma was also acquitted. However, one Aship Pradhan was convicted.
Aship Pradhan appeared at DIB office in Darjeeling for police verification report posing as a relative for three persons where the officers found all his documents to be fake. He then claimed that he had collected the documents from one Barun Rathore. He also disclosed that he was paid Rs 5000 for each of the candidates by Barun.
