There is a Tamil film called ‘Aandavan Kattalai‘ starring Vijay Sethupathi in the lead role. It is about two villagers hailing from interior Madurai wanting to go to London for employment to pay off their debts. They approach two middlemen who help them get a passport and visa using fake documents and false information and eventually land them in trouble. The rest of the film is how they emerge out of the situation they put themselves in.
This movie portrays a figment of reality of the tacit relationship between middlemen and those in the government system.
This systemic deficiency and the nexus between police, passport agents and passport officials has now come to light with Tamil Nadu BJP President K. Annamalai going hammer and tongs about the ‘Fake Passport Scam’.
Before we delve deep into the matter, here are some instances to highlight the magnitude of the problem.
Arrested For Obtaining Passport Through Fake Docs
In March 2019, a 53-year-old Sri Lankan woman was arrested at the Trichy airport while she was boarding a plane to the island nation. She had obtained an Indian passport using fake documents. She had travelled to Sri Lanka multiple times without getting caught.
Similarly in June 2019, a 41-year-old Sri Lankan named Muthuraman was apprehended at the Madurai International Airport when he tried to go to his country using an Indian passport obtained by submitting fake documents. Investigations revealed that Muthuraman had come to India 10 years ago using a Sri Lankan passport married one Vasuki in 2011 and got his name included in Vasuki’s ration card which he used to get other identity proofs and the passport.
In the same month that year, a 48-year-old Sri Lankan national named S Jeyakanthan was arrested at the Madurai International Airport after it was found that he obtained an Indian passport by forging documents to show him as an Indian. He too followed the same modus operandi of marrying an Indian woman and obtained Aadhaar card, driving license, etc which he used it for getting the Indian passport.
In January 2020, a 61-year-old man from Sivagangai district was arrested at the Madurai International Airport when he was trying to go to Dubai. He too had received a passport by submitting forged documents and false information.
A family of five Sri Lankan nationals were arrested in March 2022 after it was revealed that they obtained Indian passports by submitting forged documents. This family had been living in a suburb of Chennai since 2007 and had obtained Indian passport by submitting Aadhar and PAN of Indian citizens.
Kulasingham Dhileepan is a Sri Lankan Member of Parliament (MP) from Vanni belonging to the Eelam People’s Democratic Party. He is said to have fled India through a fake Indian passport issued in Madurai and a probe by Indian security agencies regarding the matter is on.
These are just a few of the many instances that shows how illegal immigrants are obtaining Indian passports by submitting fake documents which has serious implications on national security.
Most of them are Sri Lankan nationals who had come to India as refugees or on a visit visa. They use the modus operandi of marrying an Indian national to get documents and furnish it as address proof. In some cases, they go through brokers who help them in getting their address proofs through other questionable ways.
The Investigation
With increasing incidents of Sri Lankan nationals being caught with Indian passport obtained through fraudulent means, intelligence agencies directed the Tamil Nadu police to launch a probe following which a case was registered by the Q Branch of the state police which deals with threats from terror outfits.
Investigations by the Q Branch revealed a massive racket operated by brokers masquerading as travel agents in Madurai with the involvement of police, passport officials and post office employees. People residing in different districts had obtained passports with Madurai as their place of residence submitting fake documents. About 53 passports were reportedly obtained under just one police jurisdication – the Avaniyapuram police station of Madurai city.
According to unconfirmed reports police verification report for the bogus applicants was done for a cost of ₹30,000 to ₹50,000.
A case was registered against the brokers – Vaidhyanathan, Annadurai, Ramesh and Shanmugasundaram – under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Passport Act 1967.
Meanwhile in November 2020, a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed at the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court by an advocate named Muruga Ganesan demanding a thorough probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the issuance of passports to ineligible persons.
The Advocate General representing the state submitted that 175 witnesses were examined, 22 were identified as accused of which 16 have been arrested. Though the court had found it not necessary to transfer the case to CBI in February 2021, a senior superintendent in the Regional Passport Office in Madurai named Veeraputhiran was arrested by the CBI in July 2021 for issuing Indian passports to foreign nationals including Sri Lankans who were brought by travel agents.
It was reported that Veeraputhiran entered into a criminal conspiracy with broker Ramesh and other travel agents operating in Madurai in 2019-20. While posted as granting officer at Passport Seva Kendra, Tirunelveli, Veeraputhiran had fraudulently issued Indian passports to Sri Lankans and other ineligible people in return for financial kickbacks from the travel agents, the CBI had stated in the FIR.
The Roadblock
It must be noted that an Inspector and Assistant Commissioner of Police have a role in the police verification process for issuing passports. During this period (June 2019 to January 2020), Ilavarasu was the Insepctor of Police, one Dharmalingam was the Inspector of Police (Intelligence), Sivakumar was the Assistant Commissioner of Police (Intelligence) and Davidson Devasirvatham was the Commissioner of Police of Madurai city.
Due to the involvement of police, the investigation progressed at a snail’s pace and hit a roadblock. The High Court had ordered the Q Branch to conclude the probe on their side and submit a report within three months. The court also directed the IGP Intelligence – Internal Security Eswaramoorthy to monitor the probe whose office sent letters to different departments (Passport, Postal and Police) for sanction of the accused officials and chargesheet them in the case.
(Quick byte – Sanction from competent authorities under Section 197 of Code of Criminal Procedure is required to prosecute public servants if the alleged act committed is directly concerned with the official duty).
Kanthasamy, the Head Constable of Avaniyapuram Police Station was named as a main accused in all the 9 FIRs.
Easwaramoorthy had included the then Madurai Police Commisioner Davidson’s name as one of the officials to be investigated in the case. He had sought the required documents from the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police regarding the case and forwarded the sanction letter to the office of Home Secretary.
The sanction letter from the Home Secretary’s office was forwarded to Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Law & Order and later sent to ADGP Intelligence seeking the documents related to the case.
And who is the ADGP Intelligence?
Davidson Devasirvatham IPS.
The sanction letter to prosecute Davidson was sent to Davidson himself, a man accused in the case.
Since then, the investigation has hit a roadblock and there has been no progress made on the case.
While senior officials at the Passport office and Department of Posts have granted the sanctions to prosecute the errant officials in their respective departments, sanction for Davidson Devasirvatham and other senior Tamil Nadu police officers remains stuck in limbo for several months.
The Role Of Davidson Devasirvatham
One Sudhakaran Subramanian had applied for a passport from Madurai and his file was taken up for police verification by a woman head constable at the Koodal Pudhur police station. She found that the applicant was not a resident of the address and that the house belonged to one Air Wing Commander Karthik whose father name was Subramanian.
What’s even more telling is that the house was in an dilapidated condition and no one was living there. According to Karthik’s father in law, the house was rented to one Kanchana who vacated it in 2017. Since then, it has remained uninhabited.
And so, the woman constable had given her remarks in the report as “adverse”, which means that the information provided by the applicant did not match in reality. Inspector Chandrasekaran, who cross-checked the report, endorsed the “adverse” remark meaning that passport should not be issued to the applicant.
However, Assistant Commissioner IS Sivakumar who is the approving authority functioning on behalf of Madurai Police Commissioner Davidson, overruled the reports and approved the issuance of passport to the ineligible applicant.
It is to be noted that the Ministry of External Affairs provides a dongle in the name of a competent officer at the request of Commissioners of Police for cities and Superintendents of Police for rural. Davidson who was the Madurai Police Commissioner had reportedly obtained the digital signature dongle in the name of Assistant Commissioner Sivakumar who is responsible for doing the due diligence and uploading Passport Verification Reports (PVR).
Like this case, over 67 passports were issued under the watch of Davidson and Sivakumar. Most of these passports were with addresses on Sempoorani / Samboorani Road or Prasanna Colony located in Avaniyapuram, Madurai. Over 60 passports from a stretch of 600 metres and this glaring anamoly didn’t seem to have raised the eye-brows of either Sivakumar or Davidson. The police verification for all these passports was done by Kanthasamy, endorsed by Inspector Ilavarasu and later approved by Assistant Commissioner Sivakumar. So, Davidson or Sivakumar claiming innocence while putting the blame on a lower rung head constable will not hold water.
Another point that has been brought to light by Tamil Nadu BJP President K. Annamalai is how police officers violated the geo-tagging procedure laid down by MEA guidelines as records show that police verification was taken up at 12:13 AM.
Where Do Things Stand Now?
Over 200 passports are believed to have been issued from Madurai to ineligible persons during Davidson Devasirvatham’s stint as the city’s Police Commissioner. The whereabout of these persons who had acquired the passport through fraudulent means remain unknown and difficult to trace. It is to be noted that only the documents which they had submitted were fake and not the passport itself.
The case has already defied the June 2021 timeline set by the High Court for completion. As mentioned by Mr. Annamalai and other sources aware of the development, in all possibilities, the material evidence pointing to the role of Davidson and Sivakumar would’ve been destroyed by this time as evident from the delay on Davidson in responding to the charges.
No action has been taken against Head Constable Kanthasamy who had provided false police verification reports. He has not even been suspended and is still on duty.
Davidson, who is said to have been appointed at the behest of DMK chief MK Stalin’s son-in-law Sabarisan, continue to be functioning as ADGP Intelligence. There is no visible sign of the MK Stalin government taking any action against him.
The Dravidian Stockist media on the other hand remain tight-lipped about the issue giving it scant coverage. There has been no debate held or questions posed against the ruling DMK regime about this matter.
The BJP has written to Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi to take cognizance of the issue. The party has demanded for the case to be transferred to the CBI or National Investigation Agency (NIA) considering it as a matter of grave national security threat.
By not taking any action against Davidson, the DMK government is playing with fire and is putting India’s national security at stake.
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