143 Rohingya given Bangladeshi passport in 3 months: DB

A fraud gang has provided Bangladeshi passports to 143 Rohingya people in the last three months, said Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) additional commissioner (detective) Mohammad Harun-or-Rashid Monday.

He said the fraud gang prepared the passports using the NID information of people living in remote areas and who are unlikely to go abroad.

Twenty-three members of the ring have been detained, Harun said while speaking at a media conference at the DMP media centre in the capital.

DMP’s Lalbagh Division detective members detained 13 people, including three Rohingya women, from the capital’s Agargaon, Mohammadpur, Jatrabari and Badda on Friday last and seized documents to be used to prepare passports, prepared passports, and computers.

Based on their information, another eight members, including two Ansar members, of the ring were detained from Cox’s Bazar, Tangail and Dhaka Sunday. All of the people who were detained on Friday were placed on five-day police remand for further questioning.

Harun-or-Rashid at the media conference said some members of the ring collect NIDs while some others collect Rohingya people and bring them to Dhaka. A third team of the fraud gang prepares their fake birth certificates and NIDs. The fourth team takes steps to prepare the passports from various passport offices across the country with the help of unscrupulous Ansar members.

This gang used to supply passports to criminals as well, he added.

Addressing the media conference, DB’s Lalbagh division deputy commissioner Mashiur Rahman told Prothom Alo Sadia Sultana, a housewife from Ishwarganj in Mymensingh, does not have any passport, nor she has any possibility to go abroad. The fraud gang prepared a passport for Rohingya woman Umme Salima using the NID of Sadia Sultana.

This is how the gang prepared 143 fake passports in the last three months, he added.