Bangladeshi national arrested for travelling to Russia on fake Indian passport

Mumbai: A 39-year-old Bangladeshi national was arrested on Monday at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) after he was deported from Moscow, Russia, for travelling on a fake Indian passport.
The man, identified as Mohammad Bappi Das Narayan Chandra Das, who hails from Noakhali, five hours away from Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, was caught by the Russian authorities after they found that there was no hotel booking in his name in Moscow when asked the purpose of his visit to the country, he couldn’t give any answers.
On September 11, Mohammad reached Russia on a work visa, for which one needs a hotel booking along with other supporting documents such as receipts of booking and travel agency confirmation.
When he landed in Mumbai, the authorities in India questioned him regarding his deportation and discovered that he is not an Indian national but hails from Bangladesh.
The authorities said the man’s dialect raised suspicions and during the interrogation, he broke down and revealed his background.
“We then asked him to call his family members in Bangladesh via WhatsApp to send them his identification documents, it became clear he was a Bangladeshi national,” said an officer from Sahar police station. The man said he wanted to escape poverty and he was in search of a job abroad. Since Indian nationals are respected in Russia, he thought he should go there as an Indian to find work. “An agent in Kolkata had made him a fake Indian passport using forged documents. He then decided to go to Russia for work. However, the Russian authorities deported him after several anomalies in his documentation,” said the police officer.
“We have booked him under 340(2) (forged document or electronic record and using it as genuine), 336 (forgery) and 318 (cheating) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita along with various sections of the Foreigners Act, 1946 and The Passport Act, 1967,” said the officer.