Passport racket: More anomalies unearthed

The investigating team is yet to trace records related to police verification reports of the 27 passports,including that of the alleged Pakistani spy Syed Amir Ali,which were sent to the LIU on June 9,2005.

The RPO records showed that it received police reports of the 27 passports on that particular day. But the ATS team did not find any such reports issued by the LIU’s Lucknow office even in the months of May,June and July of 2005,sources said.

According to ATS sources,findings so far indicate that there are more possibilities that the 27 passports were issued with fake police verification reports in connivance of the RPO staff and concerned LIU policemen.

The investigating team is probing whether LIU policemen had managed to remove records related to these passports,said sources.

The ATS team is now scanning details of the other documents attached with these passports and investigators would verify each one of them from the concerned government departments,sources said.

An ATS official said that the names of the concerned RPO staff and the LIU policemen revealed by the two touts — Arshad and Chand — who are in the Delhi police custody,are being corroborated.

The duo have disclosed the names of the officials of RPO and LIU with whom they had been dealing regarding the passports for the last six years.

They are verifying if the LIU suspects as revealed by the touts were directly related to the police verification process of Amir’s application. Besides,the ATS team has also sought details about the posting and job profile of the suspected officials at the Lucknow RPO.

The suspects would be picked up for interrogation after the ATS would trace the LIU and RPO staff involved in the racket,the official added.