Immigration probes local scam issuing forged European visas to Bangladeshi nationals  

By Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana 

The Department of Immigration and Emigration is investigating a major racket to provide forged European visas to Bangladeshis for hundreds of thousands of rupees, when four such travellers were intercepted at the airport with fake visas yesterday, the Daily Mirror learns. 

Four Bangladeshi nationals who tried to leave for India with forged Italian and Serbian visas in their Bangladeshi passports were stopped at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) last evening, the sources said.

The duty immigration officer at the BIA arrival counter on suspicion referred the passports of two Bangladeshi men to Border Surveillance Unit (BSU) and found that the Italian visas pasted in them were forged.

Upon inquiry the foreigners had said that they were to board a flight to India and two others of their party had already checked into the airport.

The quickly activated authorities took two other Bangladeshi men into custody from the departure gates and found having forged Serbian visas pasted in their passports.

A senior Immigration official told the Daily Mirror that the preliminary inquiries had revealed that the foreigners had collected their forged European visas from a local agent in Colombo. They had reportedly arrived in Sri Lanka on October 10th.

The authorities said that they have intercepted over 60 Bangladeshi nationals trying to leave Sri Lanka for European destinations with forged visas during the past two months.

It is suspected that a major racket that operates in Colombo facilitates Bangladeshi nationals with forged visas for various European countries for large sums of cash up to several million rupees.

The authorities suspect whether the scam that was providing forged foreign visas to local men from the North East areas for millions of rupees in the past couple of years is behind this.

 Officials from the Investigation Division of the Department of Immigration and Emigration are conducting further inquiries.

 Meanwhile, the arrested four Bangladeshi men who are in their early thirties had been handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for further legal formalities.