Afghan held in Jabalpur for illegally obtaining Indian passport, running racket

Bhopal, Aug 1 (PTI) The Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested a person hailing from Afghanistan for allegedly obtaining an Indian passport using forged documents, a police official said on Friday.

Sohbat Khan was held on a tip off that some Afghanistan nationals were living illegally in Jalablpur, a statement from the MP police headquarters said.

"Sohbat was living illegally in Jabalpur for the last 10 years and he had also married a local woman. He not only got his Indian passport made on the basis of fake documents but was also getting Indian passports made for his Afghan friends living in West Bengal and Chhattisgarh by preparing documents on wrong addresses in Jabalpur and taking money for them," the official said.

The statement said ATS has so far received information about 20 such Afghan youths, whose passports were attempted to be made from Jabalpur addresses.

"Sohbat Khan got a driving licence from Jabalpur in 2015 and obtained an Indian passport in 2020. The ATS has so far received information about transactions worth about Rs 10 lakh for making Indian passports," the statement added.

"Out of these, passports of Akbar and Iqbal, residents of West Bengal, have already been made from fake addresses in Jabalpur. Sohbat Khan has been taken into custody and he is being questioned in detail about other people involved in this illegal work. Those who made fake documents, helped in police verification and in getting passports with fake addresses from the post office are also being identified," he said.

Apart from Sohbat Khan, two other arrested accused have been identified as Dinesh Garg, a resident of Vijaynagar in Jabalpur, and Mahendra Kumar Sukhdan of Katanga, the official said.

Garg is a forest guard in the forest department and has been working in the election cell of the collector's office for the last two years, he added. PTI MAS BNM