Three persons, including two college students, have been arrested for allegedly arranging passports with forged documents.
Acting on a complaint from the security control office, which verifies documents related to passport applications, Kolkata Police started a case at Bhowanipore police
station.
The three arrested have been identified as Samaresh Biswas, 50, his son Ripon, 19, and Dipak Mandal, 21. Ripon and Dipak are college students.
Dipak was also a part-time employee at a post office in Garia, the police said.
Samaresh and Ripon were arrested in Barasat late on Saturday and early on Sunday, respectively. Dipak was picked up from Garia on Sunday morning.
Sources said the city police have come across around 200 cases where passports were issued based on forged identity documents.
“The Aadhaar number would be original but the name and the photograph on the card would be of another person. More than 200 such cases have been found in the Kolkata Police area. The applications in all the cases were cleared without proper verification of the identity documents,” said an officer investigating
the case.
“The trio would charge at least Rs 2 lakh to arrange a passport for an applicant who did not have identity documents,” the officer said.
“The negligence of the police is also being investigated.”