JAIGAON (INDO-BHUTAN BORDER):A special type of Chinese ink is in great demand here. And the ‘vanishing ink’ is used by an international gang, which provides fake passports and has links to United Liberation Front of Asom (Ulfa) and Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen of Bangladesh (JuMB).
The Central intelligence agencies came to know about the Chinese ink after the West Bengal Police busted a gang and arrested Derek Nair, the kingpin of the racket. From Derek they came to know that the gang had international links, with agents in Kolkata, Hyderabad, Dubai and Saudi Arabia as well as in major Bangladeshi cities.
Derek, who frequently travelled abroad, has amassed several crore by providing forged passports to thousands of Bangladeshis, who with the help of Ulfa and JuMB network infiltrated via Cooch Behar into West Bengal and Dhubri in Assam and reached here.
Derek’s main partner and an expert forger Prashanta Datta, a post- graduate in science from the University of Calcutta, also landed in the police net recently.
Their phones provided evidence to their international links and from Whatsapp messages the sleuths detected the key members of Ulfa and JuMB.
Through Whatsapp, Derek would place orders for the Chinese ink from his contacts in China.
He has also visited China several times. The modus operandi of this gang has taken the sleuths by surprise.The gang would get hold of expired or rejected Indian passports. Once the terrorist group contacts Derek, he would send the expired or rejected passports to Prashanta.
He would use the special Chinese ink to remove the “rejected” stamp of the Regional Passport Office and then change the photograph and signature to come out with a forged passport.
The quality of the forged one is so good that neither the Customs nor the immigration officials would be able to detect the changes. The gang would charge around `2 lakh for an Indian passport and the terrorists have been using their services for the past several years. The “vanishing ink” is smuggled in from China to Ha in Bhutan and through Paro in that country is brought in jars to the border town. One of the main agents of this gang, Ashraful, who is based in Chittagong in Bangladesh and one of the key members of the JuMB, contacts the Ulfa for trafficking of Bangladeshis into India.
After Dubai and Saudi Arabia imposed restrictions on issuing visas to Bangladeshis, these infiltrators would pay and obtain forged Indian passports.