Youth held for using fake birth cert in passport application
Times of India | 26 May 2025
Kolkata: A 21-year-old from Kidderpore, Badal Sahani, who applied for a passport, was arrested on Saturday for allegedly submitting a forged birth certificate. He was produced before an Alipore court on Sunday and was taken into police custody.Cops believe Sahani could be part of a larger racket suspected of using forged documents to obtain genuine Indian passports. Kolkata Police has been conducting an enquiry against this racket for a long time.In March, Kolkata Police issued lookout notices against 69 individuals suspected of using forged documents to obtain Indian passports. Cops filed charge sheets against 130 people but many escaped abroad. However, cops couldn't clarify how many of them were Bangladeshi nationals.Sahani applied for a passport in April. When the matter came up for police verification, the Security Control Office (SCO) suspected the birth certificate, issued by a Gosaba panchayat, to be fake. Sahani was called to the SCO office on Saturday, and he was arrested when his statements seemed dubious.Sahani's lawyer Ata-Ur-Rahman said, "The birth certificate was issued by a panchayat. So, if someone is at fault, it's the panchayat and not my client. He had no intention to flee. He was called to the office, made to sit, and then he was arrested," said Rahman.Sahani's parents have apparently told cops his birth certificate was missing, so they approached the Gosaba administration, and got a printout of the certificate from a cyber cafe in March. Cops said preliminary probe showed Sahani was born in Bihar.