Immigration officials at Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) caught a 24-year-old man, allegedly an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh, who was trying to board a flight to Dubai, UAE on an Indian passport on Thursday. It was his accent and distinctive use of Hindi and Bengali — in keeping with the way it is spoken in Bangladesh — that caught the attention of officials.
The accused, Iqbal Hussain Ripon,hails from Habiganj district in Bangladesh. Besides an Indian passport, he had an Aadhaar card and a voter identity card.
An immigration official said, “This is a cause for concern given that he used forged documents to get a passport and other documents that validate his Indian citizenship.”
Iqbal had submitted the documents at the immigration counter on Thursday morning. He was flying to Dubai on a labour visa. While casually chatting with him in a mix of Bengali and Hindi, immigration officer Ravi K. Nair noticed something odd in the way he used certain words.
“Though West Bengal residents and Bangladeshi nationals speak the same language, there is a slight difference in the dialect and the way they speak it,” said an official in the Bureau of Immigration.
Acting on a hunch, officials detained Iqbal for further questioning. He allegedly confessed that he crossed the border into India through Bongon in West Bengal illegally a year-and-a-half-ago. He stayed there for six months before moving to Bengaluru in 2017 with a group of labourers. He found work as a construction labourer and has been living at BEML Layout in Basaveshwara Nagar for a year.
Bought documents for Rs. 80,000
Iqbal told officials that while in Bengaluru, he came in contact with a man named Sujith Saha who promised to get him identity documents for a fee of Rs. 80,000. He arranged the money, and paid Saha in exchange for a voter ID, Aadhaar and PAN card in the name of Iqbal Sheikh. With these documents, he applied for a passport and was also able to get a job as a labourer in Dubai.
The police are on the lookout for Saha who they suspect of providing similar documents to other illegal immigrants as well.
The Bureau of Immigration handed over Iqbal to the jurisdictional airport police, who have registered a case against him. He has been charged with cheating and forgery, and also under various sections of the Passport Act.
“We are working with the authorities in Delhi to cross-check Iqbal’s story and to get more information from our counterparts in Bangladesh,” said a senior police officer.
