4 August 2011 04:55 am
Alert officials at the Dubai Immigration busted an immigration racket, arresting an Indian woman and two Sri Lankan Tamils and later deporting them to India.
The three were travelling to Paris from Ahmedabad in India via Dubai.
The incident is a clear example of how alert officials at the Dubai Immigration managed to track down fake Indian passports, which the Indian immigration officials failed to detect.
According to a report in DNA, an Indian daily, there was no technical fault with any of the passports. The three passports were genuine documents issued to other people.
The three had managed to change the photos on the passports.
The passengers have been identified as Chitra Devi Manoharan, Subhash Karan Seladurai Pillai and Wamathelan Janagan. The latter are Sri Lankan nationals of Tamil origin.
The three were however impersonating as Moyuddin Subedabegam, Bobalan Shankar and Gopal Ramna, respectively. The woman is a resident of Tiruchirapalli.
The Ahmedabad police now suspect that the fake passports could not have been organised without the help of the local police, in Coimbatore and Chennai, where they were issued.
The report quoting joint commissioner of police, Special Branch, Shamsher Singh said that Dubai immigration officials managed to arrest the three in a dramatic way.
"Technically, there was nothing wrong in the passport. But the Dubai immigration officials suspected the trio. Since they are Tamil speaking people, the officials called their Tamil officer to question them. The official found that they spoke Tamils as Sri Lankan Tamils speak. During interrogation the trio broke down and revealed their identity," said the report quoting Singh.
Emirates 24-7