An Afghan national living in India illegally was caught attempting to travel to the UAE using a fake passport at the international airport in Mumbai, police said on Friday, reported the PTI.

The accused, 32-year-old Delawar Khan Menzai, had created a fake passport with the name Ali Mahmood Khan in 2017, an official from Sahar police said, the news agency reported.

He said that Menzai had entered India in 2016 on a medical visa with his parents, but he did not return to Afghanistan, and in October 2017, he managed to get a fake passport in Mumbai.

On Thursday, an immigration officer at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport caught him after he could not give satisfactory responses about his past trips to Afghanistan.

After prolonged questioning, the accused revealed that he had been living in India illegally and was travelling to Abu Dhabi on a fake passport, the official said, according to the PTI.

He has been arrested under relevant sections of the Passport Act and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Act for cheating and forgery, he added. 

In an another incident last month, the Kalyan Police in Maharashtra had detained six women and one man, all Bangladeshi nationals, found roaming suspiciously near Kalyan railway station without valid documents, officials had earlier said.

On the evening of September 9, while patrolling the station premises, a team led by PSI Swapnil Bhujbal apprehended six women.

During questioning, they admitted to being Bangladeshi citizens and failed to produce any residence permits. A search of their belongings revealed Bangladeshi identity cards, birth certificates, and mobile phones with apps like WhatsApp and IMO, used for making international calls on numbers beginning with the +88 code, police said.

The six women are identified as Shipa Balun Pathan (27) from Kamalganj district, Sharmin Monirul Islam (20) from Pirajpur, Reema Sagar Ahmed (29) from Jinjira Division in Dhaka, Sumaya Abdul Qasim (20) from Kanchan District in Nandganj, Pournima Mohammad Sulieman Akhtar (19) from Sadar district, and Zoya Jasmine (21) from Ghazipur in Dhaka.

The following morning, September 10, police also apprehended the man near the station. He confessed to being a Bangladeshi national and was found carrying a Bangladeshi birth certificate. He was the seventh arrest, and the one suspected to have brought all six women to India.

Police said all seven individuals admitted to having entered India illegally through a secret route from Bangladesh before travelling by train to Mumbai.

(with PTI inputs)

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