Suspected illegal immigrant gets PAN card while in police custody

MUMBAI: A 19-year-old suspected illegal Bangladeshi immigrant at Mira Road flummoxed the police by managing to procure a permanent account number (PAN) card while

MUMBAI: A 19-year-old suspected illegal Bangladeshi immigrant at Mira Road flummoxed the police by managing to procure a permanent account number (PAN) card while in their custody.

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A preliminary investigation revealed that the teenager, Sharmin Shaikh, used a fake birth certificate, ostensibly from Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC), to get the PAN card. She has been booked under relevant sections of the Passport Act and the Indian Penal Code.

Shaikh worked as a bar girl on the outskirts of Mumbai and claimed to have been living at Janta Nagar, Mira Road, for around a year, officials said. She appeared on the police’s after they were tipped off about her dubious nationality.

The fraud came to light after she submitted the PAN card to the police despite claiming not to have had one at the time of her arrest.

“She gave us her PAN card, which she claimed she didn’t have when we arrested her. We looked into which documents were used to apply for the PAN card and found the MBMC birth certificate. We asked the corporation to check its records and were told no such document was ever issued to her,” said a police officer.

The police were doubly shocked as the birth certificate was forged on the outskirts of Mumbai and not in a remote hamlet in West Bengal, infamous for such crimes. They are now trying to unearth the local forgery racket.

“Such forged documents are mostly made in Bengal’s 24 Paraganas district, which is rife with racketeers who provide papers for illegal immigrants,” added the police officer.

Illegal immigrants often procure school-leaving or gram panchayat certificates from places such as Hasnabad, Bongaon, Maslandapur, Bagdah, Gobindapur and Swarupnagar after crossing the border on foot. They then travel to cities and towns for jobs and use their forged papers to procure genuine Aadhar cards, PAN cards and drivers licences.

Around 1,000 illegal Bangladeshi immigrants were arrested in 2016.

Of these, around 150 have been successfully deported to Bangladesh while the remaining are under trial, an official said.