By Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana   

A major forged visa printing racket for European and Asian countries was busted by the Police Special Task Force (STF) in Kurunegala yesterday and two operatives nabbed, whilst the mastermind of the racket is still absconding, the police said.   

Officials from the STF Special Raiding Unit from the STF Headquarters in Colombo on information raided a house in Pannala yesterday morning and arrested two young men aged 32 and 22 years, who were siblings.   

A senior official attached to the STF told the Daily Mirror the two young men were operating the bogus visa printing agency in one of the rooms in their house and that they had been carrying it out for the past three years.  The sleuths found a laptop computer, a printer, printing material and specialized ink used to print foreign visa stickers along with already printed forged visas and about 20 genuine Sri Lankan passports from the crime scene.  According to suspects, they had been receiving Rs.75, 000 to Rs.100, 000 to print a forged visa to any country and the police suspect a mastermind is there to link the suspects and clients.   

A senior official of the Department of Immigration and Emigration told the Daily Mirror a special team was sent to the crime scene to assist the STF personnel in examining the genuine and forged travel documents and visas.The immigration department during the last couple of years seized a number of forged visas for numerous foreign countries pasted on genuine Sri Lankan passports when local individuals tried to leave the country at the BIA.   

The arrested suspects were to be handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) last night.