New Delhi, Oct 14 (IANS): The CBI on Saturday said that it has busted a major passport racket in West Bengal and Sikkim.

The CBI arrested two people, including a Senior Superintendent of the Passport Seva Laghu Kendra (PSLK) in Sikkim's Gangtok area, while accepting a bribe of Rs 1.90 lakh.

The arrested Senior Superintendent has been identified as Goutam Kumar Saha and the other accused has been identified as Dipu Chetri.

A CBI spokesperson said that a case was registered against 24 accused including 16 public servants. This included the Deputy Passport Officer (DPO), Kolkata; Senior Superintendent, PSLK, Gangtok; other public servants and private people.

It was alleged that public servants of the Regional Passport Office (RPO) Kolkata and PSLK Gangtok entered into a criminal conspiracy with passport agents and middlemen and were issuing passports on the basis of false and forged identity documents submitted by applicants who were not residents of India.

They were doing this in lieu of illegal gratification and the agency recovered Rs 1.90 lakh from the Senior Superintendent while he was accepting the money from a person at Siliguri.

“Both the accused were apprehended,” he said and added that during a search, Rs 3.08 lakh was also recovered from the possession of Saha.

The official said that as part the crackdown on the fake passport racket, searches were conducted at 50 places in Kolkata, Gangtok, Siliguri, Darjeeling, Alipur Dwar, etc. at the premises of all the accused.

This led to the recovery of a large number of incriminating documents related to identity proofs, issuance of forged passports etc.