Chennai: While the world's focus is now on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight that left Kuala Lumpur airport on Saturday with two passengers carrying fake passports, back home in Chennai, we have seen 72 per cent increase in cases of passengers trying to travel on duplicate Indian passports from the city airport in 2013 compared to 2012.
Immigration sources said that about 120 cases were registered at Chennai airport on passengers who tried to leave the city with fake passports in 2013. In 2012, the number of cases was only 70. “We book cases on all passengers, including a few foreigners, who try to use fake Indian passports and leave the country,” said a senior immigration officer.
He added that the country has an effective system called IVFRT (Immigration, Visa Foreigners’ Registration and Tracking), which helps in tracking people travelling in fake and forged passports. All the Indian missions abroad, and internally all immigration offices and check posts namely airports and seaports are connected through the system.
In 2013 and 2012, the immigration officials at Chennai airport had detected around 600 cases each, of people under look out circulars, who not only carried fake passports but also were involved in crime and other cases. Among them, 240 were foreigners, while the remaining were Indians in 2013. In 2012, the number of foreigners was 250.
An immigration officer at Chennai airport said that when a passport is swiped at the immigration counter, the system immediately gives all the details. “On an average we get 30 to 40 cases monthly of duplicate or forged passports. While we arrest the Indians, we refuse entry to foreigners and send them back to the originating country,” he added.
“We also put a kind of tag on the fake or forged passport of the foreigners and inform the concerned countries. The airline will take them back and at the time of immigration, the officials there would arrest them,” he said. According to him, around 260 foreigners were refused entry into Chennai because of some issues with passport last year.
