Newindpress

Bangalore, Apr 25: While the alleged human trafficking involving MP Babubhai Katara has exposed several similar incidents that have gone unnoticed, the immigration wing of the Bangalore City Police too are maintaining a vigil.

While the police did have a spate of deporting cases a couple of years ago, the number of cases have come down now, thanks to the advanced equipment. From January to March 2007, the city immigration police caught two people who tried to fly to Dubai on fake passports.

“Most of the facilitators of these fake passports are natives of Kerala and attempt to traffic Keralites to countries in the UAE. The cases were detected after advanced examination and verification,” a senior police official told his paper.

The immigration wing at the airport depends on a ‘Question Document Verifier’, a highly sensitive machine that can detect even the slightest discrepancy. “The equipment was provided two years ago and it has helped detect forgery and other manipulations on passports,” said the official.

Cases of people landing on Bangalore Airport from other countries using fake passports have also comparatively come down.

In March this year, the police arrested a Sri Lankan Roser Roven, travelling from France to Bangalore on an Indian passport. Investigation revealed that he had trafficked many of his friends from Sri Lanka with fake Indian passports to Mumbai, Delhi and Goa.

Officials said that a trend noticed over the last five years involved South Indians, especially Keralites, ferrying people to the Middle East. They use stolen, lost and sold passports to traffic people. As per the procedure, when the machine detects a fraud case, the suspect is interrogated and handed over to the police of the particular jurisdiction.

“The screening procedure takes less than a minute, and the policemen are also trained to look for discrepancies,” an officer said.