HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

A Bangladeshi citizen involved in forging hand-written Nepali passports for his fellow citizens has landed in police net.

Two months of arduous task by a special team of the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police led to the arrest of Mohammad Delawar Hossain, 44, of Dhaka from the premises of Tribhuvan International Airport yesterday. He has been accused of operating a criminal enterprise under the cloak of a travel agent and proprietor of Hossain Enterprise Travels and Tours in Kathmandu.

Hossain used to buy hand-written Nepali passports from manpower agents and sell them to Bangladeshi citizens aspiring for foreign employment in Gulf countries.

CIB tailed Hossain after the arrest of Kumar Puri, 47, of Khotang and Purna Bahadur Magar, 43, of Sankhuwasabha, and Kamal Prasad Sapkota, 43, of Jhapa on April 25. Puri and Magar were proprietors of AL Zarifa Manpower Agency and RP International Consultancy Pvt Ltd respectively, while Sapkota was managing director at KL Employment Service Pvt Ltd.

Devi Prasad Kafle, managing director at the NCF Employment Service Pvt Ltd, who has been accused of being involved in passport forgery was presented before the Kathmandu District Court after CIB prosecuted them in the court. The court released them on bail later.

SSP Uttam Kumar Karkee, officiating director at the CIB, said they had sold 25 Nepali passports to Hossain for Rs 2.9 millio8n in February. “Their modus operandi was to collect passports from people aspiring to work in foreign countries and paying them equivalent to the fees charged by the Department of Passport for obtaining a new one on the pretext of losing the passport before selling them to Bangladeshi nationals,” he revealed. Passports are sold to forgery racketeers for hefty cash by the concerned passport holders with the backing of manpower agencies and ‘passport lost’ notices are published in newspapers to obtain new ones.

The 25 Nepali passport holders were supposed to go to Saudi Arabia through KL Employment Services Pvt Ltd, but the manpower agents sold the passports to Hossain. Hossain conceded that he used to sell Nepali passports to his compatriots for Rs 3 lakh. Racketeers would replace the photo of a genuine Nepali passport holder with that of a Bangladeshi national to help them go abroad for employment.

Published on: 16 July 2014 | The Himalayan Times