Kolkata, Dec 15 (IANS): Two persons have been arrested for their alleged involvement in a racket for making fake Indian passports for Bangladeshi citizens illegally immigrating to West Bengal, an official said on Sunday.

The arrested individuals have been identified as Samaresh Biswas and Deepak Mondal. While Biswas is a resident of Barasat in North 24 Parganas, Deepak is a resident of South 24 Parganas.

Mondal is a contractual staff with the Indian postal department. Sources from the state police said that recently, his son Ripon Mondal was also arrested by the cops.

In face of his interrogation he admitted that his father and Biswas were also involved in the racket. Both were presented at a district court on Sunday and the court remanded them to police custody till December 20.

It has come to the notice of the cops that Biswas was also earlier arrested at New Delhi by Delhi Police because of his involvement with forgery activities.

These fake passport rackets operating at different parts of West Bengal, especially in the districts having borders with Bangladesh has become a major headache for the intelligence and security agencies with apprehensions of rise in illegal immigration amid the ongoing crisis in Bangladesh.

Recently, Selim Matabbabar, an erstwhile associate of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was arrested from a hotel at Park Street area in Kolkata.

He got a job at that hotel by virtue of his fake Indian passport which he procured from a racket in the bordering Nadia district.

There are also intelligence inputs of members of Bangladesh-based fundamentalists group Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HUT) are lately trying to be active in the bordering districts of West Bengal with Bangladesh and making attempts to set up sleeper-cells there.

There are also intelligence inputs about the sudden increase in the number of outsiders hiring rooms in different villages close to the international borders with Bangladesh.