Hyderabad: On a tip-off, Commissioner’s Task Force personnel here conducted simultaneous raids at Sana Palace, Saidabad and Golconda and nabbed five fraudsters for altering and reconstructing Indian passports with high quality of counterfeit documents for purpose of traveling abroad. The sleuths also seized 88 Indian passports belonging to victims and customers, three fake passports, fake rubber stamps, cash of Rs 3,12,000, three CPUs, four monitors, one Vivo laptop, one rubber stamp making machine, one Canon scanner, colour printer-cum-scanner, one black and white printer, seven mobile phones and two pen drives from the accused.
According to city police commissioner, principal accused M0ohd Abdul Raheemuddin, 42, was operating an illegal visa consultancy firm and forging documents at his office at Sana Palace, Saidabad and his accomplice Khaled Khan was operating another fake consultancy at Golconda. Mohammed Shaik Illiyas, 40, of Rayapuram, Chennai, Syed Omran, 32, (DTP operator), Mohd Zaheeruddin, 49, (rubber stamp maker) were also arrested.
The commissioner stated that these fraudulent documents were purchased by individuals applying for visas to Canada, USA UAE, France, Spain, Italy and so on. The accused used to collect original passport and Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000 as process fee from each client. Later, they used to collect from Rs 3.5 lakh to Rs 4 lakh each from those who obtained visas successfully. In this process, Mohd Abdul Raheemuddin so far provided fake passports to some 400 to 500 people and amassed up to Rs one crore and amassed properties at several places in the city.
The accused were apprehended under the supervision of Task Force DCP P Radhakishan Rao, assisted by Inspector K Nageshwar Rao, sub-inspectors K S Ravi, K Srikanth, B Parameshwar, G Rajashekhar Reddy and North Zone Team members. (NSS)
