Two Mangaluru residents among nine arrested in fake passport racket in Bengaluru
Five of nine arrested accused are Sri Lankan citizens
Bengaluru: City police on Wednesday arrested nine people on charges of forging Indian passports using fake credentials. Those among the arrested include five Sri Lankan citizens and two people from Bengaluru. The other two accused reportedly hail from Mangaluru.
The accused have been identified as Sadiq Pasha, 33, and his associates Anees Sait, Nawal, and Hydar.
The five Sri Lankan citizens arrested during the operation are said to have procured fake Indian passports from Pasha and his gang.
City Police Commissioner C.H. Pratap Reddy said that the accused have similar cases against them in six police stations in and around the city and were arrested earlier. However, after coming out on bail, the accused continued to create fake credentials for their clients to apply and get passports. The fake credentials include voter ID, Aadhaar, and school leaving certificates in the name of their clients to be used as documents to be submitted to claim domicile status for a passport.
Using the modus operandi, the accused helped 50 people get a passport. The beneficiaries include foreign nationals and habitual offenders. Citing an example, a senior police officer said that one of the beneficiaries is a habitual thief having as many as 36 house break-in cases while his brother has 15 criminal cases pending against him.
The scam was unearthed on October 19 when alert passport verification duty staff based on a complaint cross-checked their credentials and reported the matter. Following this, a special team was formed to arrest the gang.
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8 dead, dozens wounded in Russian strike on Ukraine's Odesa port
Kyiv (AP): Eight people were killed and 27 wounded in a Russian missile strike on port infrastructure in Odesa, southern Ukraine, late on Friday, Ukraine's Emergency Service said on Saturday morning.
Some of the wounded were on a bus at the epicentre of the overnight strike, the service said in a Telegram post. Trucks caught fire in the parking lot, and cars were also damaged.
The port was struck with ballistic missiles, said Oleh Kiper, the head of the Odesa region.
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Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces hit a Russian warship and other facilities with drones, Ukraine's General Staff said in a statement on Saturday.
The nighttime attack on Friday hit the Russian warship “Okhotnik,” according to the statement posted to the Telegram messaging app.
The ship was patrolling in the Caspian Sea near an oil and gas production platform. The extent of the damage is still being clarified, the statement added.
A drilling platform at the Filanovsky oil and gas field in the Caspian Sea was also hit. The facility is operated by Russian oil giant Lukoil. Ukrainian drones also struck a radar system in the Krasnosilske area of Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
