Eleven touts arrested near Passport Office

MADURAI, May 20, 2011

The accused have taken huge sums from the public

Eleven persons were arrested on charges of cheating the public with fake documents among others near the passport office. All the accused were produced before a court here on Thursday.

Following complaints, Deputy Inspector General and Commissioner of Police (in-charge) Sandeep Mittal directed the Tallakulam police to register a case.

False promises

Deputy Commissioner of Police (law and order) K.P. Senthil Kumari formed special teams comprising ACP Ramasamy, Inspector of Police (Tallakulam) Chidambara Murugesan, Sub-Inspectors Parthiban, Baskaran, and Venkataraman among others.

Investigations revealed that brokers regularly assembled at some of the photocopy shops opposite the passport office here and induced the public with false promises of getting fresh passport swiftly. Many had lost money in the process as they were unable to identify the accused in the past.

It had also come to light now that the accused identified themselves as brokers or consultants or representatives of some reputed travel agencies and claimed that they were authorised persons by the passport officials to handle fresh passport application forms.

Believing them totally, many people agreed to enclose fake certificates such as TC (transfer certificate) and birth certificate to obtain passport, which landed them in trouble at the time of verification by passport staffs.

Warning from officials

The passport officials had categorically warned the public coming to the office to be aware of strangers and not to part with cash or their original documents to unknown persons who lured them with all promises, police said.

An official press release gave the names of the accused as U. Jaiganesh (24) of PWD quarters, R. Gubendran (53) of Thathaneri, M. Syed Ibrahim (22) of Ramavarma Nagar K. Pudur, S. Jayachandran (44) of Sairam Street, Uchaparambumedu Thirupalai, N. Varadarajan (51) of DRO Colony K. Pudur, N. Rajan (35) of North Street Marthandam Kanyakumari district, S. Ibrahim (39) of Nehru Street Athikulam, T. Edwin (36) of Kulasekaram Kanyakumari district, A. Thangaraj (51) of Vadakankarai Kanyakumari district, T. Chandraksekar (38) of Alagar Nagar K. Pudur, and T. Murugesan (45) of New Street, Sellur.

Police said that the accused had taken huge sums from the public promising to get them fresh passports under some pretext or the other. Further investigation is on.