New Delhi: Well-oiled rackets to facilitate entry, modules entering Aadhaar card holders as 18-years-old only to ‘correct’ later for validating their stay and helping get other forged documents, and extortion are some of the patterns that have come during police crackdowns on illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
Though the illegal presence of Bangladeshi nationals in India is a well-known fact as seen in the arrests made far and wide places like Dhule, Pune Rural, Jaipur, Aligarh and Delhi, the police are on an overdrive in Delhi to verify documents of suspects from Bangladesh and have deported several of them back to their homeland.
The identification and deportation, according to the police, of the illegal migrants gathered pace after the Delhi Lieutenant Governor wrote to the chief secretary and police commissioner this month asking them to launch a “special drive” for the next two months.
“These drives against foreign nationals staying here with fake papers is a regular feature. However, since the L-G’s direction and the political developments in Bangladesh, we have increased our vigil and surveillance to identify immigrants who might have entered India in recent time,” a police officer told ThePrint.
Aadhaar cards, generated on the basis of bogus identity details, have been increasingly confiscated from suspects, be it agents or illegal immigrants in such cases. What was conceived as a fool-proof document for over 1 billion people is now seemingly being procured using fraudulent means.
Take for instance the murder case of a Bangladeshi national in Delhi’s Sangam Vihar. As many as 21 Aadhaar cards, 4 voter cards, and 8 PAN cards belonging to Bangladeshis were seized from Sentu Seik alias Raja’s residence in Sangam Vihar area.
Far & wide
In the evening of 20 December, Jaipur West Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Amit Kumar received a tip-off that a Bangladeshi girl was duped of hefty sum by her countrymen living illegally in the city. The police informant had also alerted the officer of a possible entry at Jaipur Airport police station as part of procedure followed by the tourists coming into India.
Having received the input, the police zeroed in on Sohag Khan, residing in flats allotted to the urban poor by the Jaipur Development Authority. During a search, Bangladeshi passports of Khan and his family members were confiscated, confirming their identity.
DCP Kumar told ThePrint that the entire family members were found to have forged Aadhaar cards. Khan was taken into custody for forgery of documents, including a fake Aadhaar showing a 45-year-old man was shown as an 18-year-old.
“He revealed the chain of nexus that helped him in the forgery of Aadhaar numbers. Noju Fakeer was 45 but an Aadhaar was made showing him as an 18-year-old, establishing the role of agents. Manoj Mandal, who made the Aadhaar, was also arrested,” the DCP told ThePrint.
Khan had used his own address acquired fraudulently to make Fakeer’s Aadhaar and they were all set to approach a different Aadhaar centre claiming ‘incorrect entry’ of the age.
Last month, the Jaipur West Police facilitated deportation of 11 such people while Khan remains under judicial custody.
When it comes to Delhi, the police have done background checks of over 5,000 people suspected of staying illegally and 43 of them deported this month. Nearly 175 were still under investigation and a call on their deportation would be taken after the verification, according to the Delhi Police.
Under the guidance of @LtGovDelhi, team of @DCPSouthDelhi busted an illegal immigration racket, arresting 5 Bangaleshi Nationals and 6 accused involved in generating Aadhaar cards, voter IDs on the basis of fake birth certificates for Bangladeshi nationals.
#DPUpdates pic.twitter.com/5GG3xICDyW
— Delhi Police (@DelhiPolice) December 24, 2024
In Maharashtra, the Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) is undertaking a “special drive” to trace, identify and arrest such illegal Bangladeshis. The ATS, in December, carried out searches across several districts such as Thane, Navi Mumbai, Mumbai, Nashik and Solapur, and arrested 43 suspects.
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Chain of Aadhaar forgery
The module of illegal infiltration rackets busted in Jaipur and Delhi suggest a similar pattern, and coincidentally the issues came to the police’s notice the same day.
In the Sangam Vihar case, the police first nabbed four Bangladeshis on the charge of killing Sentu Sheikh alias Raja, who allegedly used to threaten them on one pretext or another.
During the investigation after their arrest, their illegal immigration to India came into picture. “Interrogation revealed that they had entered India illegally and had been residing in the Sangam Vihar area for the past year procuring fake identity documents. During interrogation, all of them presented their Bangladeshi ID cards (chip-based NID cards) or birth certificates,” South Delhi DCP Ankit Chauhan said.
Investigation revealed Raja approached Sahil Sehgal, who ran a computer centre in Rohini district and generated fake certificates related to birth, matriculation, caste, COVID and income, at nominal prices.
Raja, the DCP said, was then “referred” to Ranjit who generated fake Aadhaar based on certificates prepared by Sehgal. Like in the Jaipur forgery case, the Delhi module generated Aadhaars showing their holders as either 18 years or lower.
Chauhan further said that investigators also traced the addresses given on four voter cards recovered from Raja’s residence and one of them, a woman, was arrested from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly who claimed she got her card with the help of Raja.
“Her Bangladeshi birth certificate issued by the Dhaka City Corporation was retrieved from her phone, and so were the Bangladeshi National Identity Cards of her parents,” the DCP added.
Four Bangladeshis, including a couple, were arrested from Dhule district as recently as last Monday in Maharashtra. Terming the arrest as purely “intelligence based”, Superintendent of Police (SP) Shrikant Dhivare said that these immigrants had reached Dhule in search of better livelihood.
In the FIR, a copy of which ThePrint has seen, the accused were booked under relevant sections of Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS), the Passport (Entry into India) Rules, the Foreigners Act, and the Foreigners Order.
In October, 21 Bangladeshi nationals were rounded up for illegal stay in Pune Rural district. The arrested accused were slapped with Sections 336 (2&3) (forgery), 338 (forgery of valuable documents) and 340 (2) (using forged documents as genuine) of the BNS along with relevant sections of the Foreigners Act and the Passports Act.
“Out of the 21 accused, nine were found in possession of fake Aadhaar and PAN cards, while another one had a bogus voter card. The accused were working as casual labourers,” Pune Rural SP Pankaj Deshmukh said.
In a similar case, the ATS of Uttar Pradesh Police also arrested a couple from Aligarh town. They were found with Aadhaar documents showing a fraudulent address in West Bengal.
‘Special drives’
Ever since the L-G sought “strict actions” against illegal immigrants, all the police districts in Delhi have intensified verification drives in slums and unauthorised colonies.
In South East Delhi, police verified nearly 1,300 individuals and eight of them have been detained in the last couple of weeks. The South district police have detained 12 Bangladeshis, including those involved in the murder of Raja.
Apart from detecting 12 illegal Bangladeshis and facilitating their deportation, DCP Surendra Choudhary said, the South West District police have sent teams to Assam and West Bengal to verify revenue records and address of some suspects.
Similarly, the Outer North district police also constituted teams to identify members of modules and immigrants staying illegally in India, specifically Delhi.
As many as 550 suspects are under scanner of the police in the district. “These details were also cross-checked with pradhans and sarpanches. Some pradhans and sarpanches were found to have provided incomplete or unauthentic information. To validate the provided details, a team was dispatched to various districts in West Bengal, including Birbhum, Purba Medinipur, South 24 Parganas, and Murshidabad, to physically verify the permanent addresses of 50 suspects,” Outer North DCP Nidhin Valsan said.
Additionally, two teams were sent to contact the Birbhum and Purba Medinipur Senior Superintendents of Police (SSPs) for verifying the addresses of suspects.
Outer district DCP Sachin Sharma told ThePrint that around 545 individuals have been marked as suspects out of around 1,300 people scanned so far. and that teams have been dispatched to Assam and Bengal for verification of documents provided by suspects.
North district DCP Raja Banthia told ThePrint that two Bangladeshi nationals have been deported so far after scanning of nearly 500 people in his jurisdiction.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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The Aadhar has, quite unfortunately, turned out to be an Achilles’ heel. There are lakhs of fake Aadhar numbers/cards in circulation now and are being used for every conceivable illegal activity. The security agencies seem hapless in countering this issue.
Every other day, hundreds of fake Aadhar cards are confiscated by various state police forces. The UIDAI must be brought to task for this. It is a matter of national security and must be dealt with seriously.