Some MLAs, pradhans on ATS radar after recovery of Solanki’s letter from illegal immigrants
Expressing concern over illegal immigration, a senior police official said illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar were entering the country through Bangladesh border and had spread in different parts of the state as well as the country. He said the situation was alarming since they were managing to get Indian identity proofs with the help of some people for the past many years.
Lucknow Several corporators, village pradhans and some MLAs are under the UP Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) scanner after police on Sunday arrested a family of five Bangladesh nationals (including a 17-year-old minor) from Kanpur with a letter purportedly signed by jailed Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA Irfan Solanki which authorised them as Indian nationals. The Kanpur police said as many as 13 passports and five Aadhar cards were recovered from their possession.
The police had filed a charge-sheet against the MLA on Friday, in connection with allegedly setting the house of a woman on fire in a bid to capture her land at Jajmau area of the Kanpur. However, the MLA’s lawyer Naresh Chandra Tripathi alleged that the action against his client was being taken under political influence. Irfan is two-time MLA from Sisamau Assembly seat in Kanpur on an SP ticket.
Expressing concern over illegal immigration, a senior police official said illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar were entering the country through Bangladesh border and had spread in different parts of the state as well as the country. He said the situation was alarming since they were managing to get Indian identity proofs with the help of some people for the past many years. Over four dozen such illegal immigrants had been arrested from different parts of the state in the past two years and the ATS was already working on this nexus of people involved in preparing fake documents of illegal immigrants, he added.
He said on the basis of authority letters claiming that they were Indian nationals, these illegal immigrants used to get employment in different organisations and avail different schemes meant for unprivileged people of the country. “After finding an authorisation letter of being Indian purportedly signed by the SP MLA in Kanpur, several other village pradhans, corporators and MLAs, who have power of giving such authority letters have come under scanner. Besides Kanpur, several such people are from other districts, including Aligarh, Agra, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Moradabad, Rampur, Saharanpur, Bareilly and districts close to India-Nepal porous border in UP and Bihar,” said the official.
Another police official privy to the development said earlier also, similar cases surfaced in the past where illegal immigrants got their Indian identity proofs made on the basis of authority letters issued by local pradhans and corporators. He said the investigation agency was now collecting evidences against people’s representatives involved in such activities.
Earlier in June 2021, the ATS busted a human trafficking racket, which included establishing illegal immigrants from Bangladesh refugee camps in different parts of India (including Uttar Pradesh) and making their Indian identity cards like rations cards, Aadhar cards and passports.
The officials said so far no terror link had been established but the racketeers were involved in many illegal activities like gold smuggling, illegal money transactions, hawala and women trafficking. They said one Hafiz Shafeeq, who was arrested in 2021, had been staying in Meerut for the past two years after illegally coming here. Before settling down here, Shafeeq was a frequent visitor to the country and had even visited Hyderabad and other places, they added.