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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Israel launches first airstrike on Lebanon since ceasefire, accusing Hezbollah of breaching truce
Beirut, Nov 28: The Israeli military on Thursday said its warplanes fired on southern Lebanon after detecting Hezbollah activity at a rocket storage facility, the first Israeli airstrike a day after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took hold.
There was no immediate word on casualties from Israel's aerial attack, which came hours after the Israeli military said it fired on people trying to return to certain areas in southern Lebanon. Israel said they were violating the ceasefire agreement, without providing details. Lebanon's state-run National News Agency said two people were wounded.
The back-to-back incidents stirred unease about the agreement, brokered by the United States and France, which includes an initial two-month ceasefire in which Hezbollah members are to withdraw north of the Litani River and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border. The buffer zone would be patrolled by Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers.
On Thursday, the second day of a ceasefire after more than a year of bloody conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon's state news agency reported that Israeli fire targeted civilians in Markaba, close to the border, without providing further details. Israel said it fired artillery in three other locations near the border. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press reporter in northern Israel near the border heard Israeli drones buzzing overhead and the sound of artillery strikes from the Lebanese side.
The Israeli military said in a statement that “several suspects were identified arriving with vehicles to a number of areas in southern Lebanon, breaching the conditions of the ceasefire.” It said troops “opened fire toward them” and would “actively enforce violations of the ceasefire agreement.”
Israeli officials have said forces will be withdrawn gradually as it ensures that the agreement is being enforced. Israel has warned people not to return to areas where troops are deployed, and says it reserves the right to strike Hezbollah if it violates the terms of the truce.
A Lebanese military official said Lebanese troops would gradually deploy in the south as Israeli troops withdraw. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.
The ceasefire agreement announced late Tuesday ended 14 months of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that began a day after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza, when the Lebanese Hezbollah group began firing rockets, drones and missiles in solidarity.
Israel retaliated with airstrikes, and the conflict steadily intensified for nearly a year before boiling over into all-out war in mid-September. The war in Gaza is still raging with no end in sight.
More than 3,760 people were killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel — over half of them civilians — as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.
Some 1.2 million people were displaced in Lebanon, and thousands began streaming back to their homes on Wednesday despite warnings from the Lebanese military and the Israeli army to stay out of certain areas. Some 50,000 people were displaced on the Israeli side, but few have returned and the communities near the northern border are still largely deserted.
In Menara, an Israeli community on the border with views into Lebanon, around three quarters of homes are damaged, some with collapsed roofs and burnt-out interiors. A few residents could be seen gathering their belongings on Thursday before leaving again.
