25 September 2023 03:52 am Views - 3895
Unlawful migration to greener pastures by producing forged travel papers continued as two leading airlines referred their suspicious passengers with bogus documents to the immigration authorities at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) during the weekend.
Two Sri Lankan males who tried to migrate to Canada and Italy with suspicious travel documents had been intercepted by their airlines and were referred to the Department of Immigration and Emigration to learn that the papers were not genuine.
A 43-year-old man from Valvettithurai, Jaffna had tried to take a SriLankan Airlines flight to Dubai to head to Canada on Saturday, when the flight ground staff had felt suspicious about his documents, the sources said.
He was referred to the BIA immigration authorities and the validity of his papers was examined by the Border Surveillance Unit (BSU) to find he was having a forged Canadian visa pasted on his passport. However, his local passport was genuine.
Meanwhile, a 30-year-old man from Kolonna who had tried to leave the country on a Qatar Airways flight was referred to the airport immigration authorities by the airline staff, as the Italian PR card (permanent resident) he was having looked dodgy.
The officials at BSU found that the Italian PR card had been forged. The suspect had tried to leave Sri Lanka by using his genuine local passport, whilst the authorities found a forged passport also in his possession.
A senior Immigration official told the Daily Mirror that these passengers had paid a fortune to get these forged documents done through brokers, yet with the least knowledge that they could be detected through high-tech data systems at the BIA.
The suspects were detained for further inquiries. (Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana)