An Afghanistan national allegedly slipped through India’s identity and immigration systems for years by repeatedly travelling on fraudulent ly obtained Indian pass ports under fake identi ties, before being finally intercepted at the Immi gration Check Post of Da bolim International Air port in the early hours of Monday. According to the com plaint filed by Shanigaram Sriharsha, wing in charge of the Bureau of Immi gration at the airport, the accused — identified as Diwraj Hiro from Kandhar, Afghanistan, presently re siding at Kailash Nagar in Delhi — was intercepted after immigration officials discovered that he had allegedly been travelling in and out of India since 2009 using an Afghanistan passport. During verification, offi cials found that the accused had allegedly renewed his Afghanistan passport out side India and re-entered the country on January 2, 2016.
He had recently arrived in Goa from Russia via Bahrain when immigra tion authorities flagged suspicious discrepancies in his travel and identity documents. Investigators later un covered a calculated pat tern of identity fraud span ning several years. According to immigration authorities, the accused was allegedly travelling on a fraudulently obtained genuine In dian passport while impersonating himself as ‘Anil Shukla’ from Kailash, Delhi. Further investigations revealed that he had earlier operated under yet another fake Indian identi ty — ‘Suresh Ahuja’ — and had allegedly secured another Indian passport using forged documents. Police said the accused allegedly cheated multiple Indian authorities by assuming fabricated Indian identities and unlawfully obtaining official documents meant exclusively for Indian citizens.
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The case has exposed grave vulnerabilities in passport verification and identity authentication mechanisms, par ticularly as investigators suspect the forged Indian pass ports may have been used to secure overseas employment and facilitate international movement without detection. Police investigations have further revealed that the ac cused had allegedly travelled abroad using another fraudu lently obtained Indian passport and may have used forged Indian credentials for employment in Russia.
Authorities are now verifying the extent of the document fraud net work and whether others were involved in facilitating the operation. An offence has been registered under Sections 318, 319, 336(1), 336(2), 336(3), 337, 338, 339 and 340 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, along with Section 12(1)(b) of the Indian Passport Act and Section 17 of the Citizenship Act. The accused was produced before the Judicial Magistrate First Class, Vasco, which remanded him to four days of po lice custody. PSI Prathmesh Palkar is conducting further investiga tions under the supervision of PI John Fernandes and over all supervision of Mormugao DySP Gurudas Kadam.
