Cop, IB officer and airline staffer booked in fake passport racket

The Delhi Police Special Cell has booked a Delhi Police officer, an Intelligence Bureau (IB) officer posted as an Immigration officer at IGI Airport and a Jet Airways security officer, in four separate cases of human trafficking.

The chargesheet names Immigration officer Chaman Azhar; Delhi Police Sub-Inspector Naveen Chandra Upadhyay; Jet Airways security officer Manoj Sarpal; 'agents' who supplied fake passports; and clients who made use of their services.

The 12 persons accused in four chargesheets have been booked for cheating, forgery, using forged documents, destruction of evidence, criminal conspiracy and under the Passports Act.

They have been accused of providing fake passports, immigration stamps and boarding passes to people from small towns in Haryana, Punjab, Karnataka and Gujarat to allow them to travel to Canada and the USA.

Police said Sarpal confessed that he had several blank Air India boarding passes and would prepare fake boarding passes on his personal computer.

The racket was busted in March 2011, when one of their clients, Navdeep Kaur, was apprehended in Brussels for using a passport reported stolen from Britain. Kaur was on a flight to Toronto via Brussels.

She was using the passport of UK resident Asha Panigrahi, reported stolen by the Interpol.

The chargesheet says Kaur told police that she got the fake passport from one Manveer, who had met her at Gurdwara Bangla Sahib in Delhi. She said she had paid him Rs 6 lakh for the passport.

According to police, Manveer dropped her at IGI Airport on March 28, 2011, where Sarpal contacted her, gave her a passport in the name of Asha Panigrahi, with a Jet Airways security sticker and a boarding pass.

Police said Sarpal was promised Rs 50,000 per passenger for sending people abroad. Sarpal reportedly said he had "managed eight passengers, including four on the day of the arrest".

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