CHENNAI: A Bangladeshi living in India for the past 15 years with forged documents was arrested by immigration authorities at the Chennai international airport on Monday, official sources said.
Moseep Hossen (38) was arrested when he was about to board an Air Asia flight to Malaysia around 8am using an Indian passport obtained fraudulently. He was handed over to the Central Crime Branch (CCB) of Chennai Police for further investigation, source said.
A probe revealed that Hossen had crossed over to India from Bangladesh through the border in Tripura in 2009. He had stayed in the border state for a few years and worked in eateries.
He also managed to get a fake Aadhaar card, voter ID and birth certificate through some contacts there, sources added. After getting to know about similar opportunities in Tamil Nadu, he came to Chennai a few years later, officials said.
In Chennai, he was employed in a few prominent hotels in Nungambakkam and southern suburbs like Vandalur and Tambaram.
Through colleagues and friends, he came to know about lucrative opportunities in the restaurant business in south-east Asian countries like Malaysia and Singapore.
In 2017, Hossen managed to get an Indian passport from the Tambaram Regional Passport Office (RPO) using a falsified police verification, the sources said.
Using the passport, he planned to migrate to Malaysia for work on a tourist visa and relocate there.
However, he was stopped by an immigration official on Monday after which he was subject to questioning, when the details stumbled out.
Key documents including the passport, voter ID, Aadhaar card, and birth certificate were seized and handed over to CCB, whose forgery investigation wing will conduct a probe, sources said.
This is the second arrest by immigration officials at Chennai airport recently. In September, three Pakistanis with fake Indian passports and Aadhaar cards were arrested when they landed from Dhaka. Following an investigation, 18 Pakistanis who were living in Bengaluru under fake identities were arrested.