India: A plane crash, a fake passport and a slew of questions

Passport fraud case is tip of iceberg for forged documents in India, authorities say.

Mridu Khullar RelphJuly 3, 2010 07:53Updated July 3, 2010 07:53

Members of a television crew walk past debris at the crash site of Air India Express on May 22, 2010. The plane overshot the runway, killing 158 people on board. Only eight people survived. (Prashanth Vishwanathan/Getty Images)

NEW DELHI, India — When an Air India Express flight from Dubai overshot the runway in Mangalore, India, and burst into flames, killing 158 passengers and crew, the Indian press was abuzz with stories about airline safety, the national carrier's recent troubles and its many mistakes.

But as names and passport numbers of the dead flashed on television screens across the country, another scandal was about to be exposed: That of a fake passport racket.

It has come to the attention of authorities in the country that as many as 10 passengers on that flight in May may have been using fraudulent passports for their travel. "There were various discrepancies in some of the passports of passengers," said M.K. Lokesh, India's ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. "I wouldn't call it a racket, but there were some problems."

Several apparent irregularities prompted an investigation. Some of the addresses were clearly fabricated, and many of the photographs on the passports didn't match the people carrying them.

In the United Arab Emirates, 27-year-old Shavanas Mammed Koya was shocked when relatives and neighbors started calling and offering condolences.

"All my friends here got calls from my relatives in India worried that I had died. Fortunately, I had spoken to my wife in the morning, before the news of the crash emerged, so she knew I was all right," he told the National, a newspaper published from the United Arab Emirates.

Koya's passport number was listed against the name of a certain Abdul Samad, who died in the crash, but Koya had neither left the country nor had any plans to travel. He lodged a complaint with the consulate, which has confirmed that he had not left the country and was the rightful owner of the passport in question.

Koya's situation has shed light on a fairly well-established and well-known organized crime racket, the "Kasargod Embassy" in Kerala's northern district. The Embassy deals in fake and forged passports, providing them to poor workers in the Persian Gulf. The forgers manipulate the passport by replacing the photograph and stamping it with various residence and visit visas that they then sell for about $1,360.

Many employers in the United Arab Emirates sponsor and fly over their workers and then hold on to their passports as a form of security, to protect themselves from the workers fleeing to another job or another country. While illegal, the practice is widespread, and many times, workers end up never getting back their passports.

The fake passport racket then enables not only workers from India to get to the Gulf in the first place but stranded workers abroad to come back to their countries. According to local media reports, 39 of the passengers were from Kasargode in Kerala, and were likely poor migrants from the village.

Abdul Samad, who was traveling on Koya's passport had been a casual worker in Dubai for over 19 years and was on his way back home for the first time in three years.