A 3 member gang involved in a fake passport racket and gold smuggling has been apprehended by the Tamil Nadu police. The arrests were made after Revenue Intelligence officials discovered a fake passport in the possession of Mohammad Sheikh Iliyaz, who was previously arrested for smuggling gold from abroad.

Following Iliyaz’s arrest on May 20 by the Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), an investigation was launched into his background and activities. Based on his confession, his accomplices, Mohammad Bhukari and Shiva Kumar, were also apprehended. It was revealed that Iliyaz would purchase unused pages of expired passports from agents within the country and abroad, paying between ₹1500 and ₹5000. He would then replace the used pages with new ones and use chemicals obtained from e-commerce websites to replace the encrypted serial numbers.

The gang possessed a sophisticated setup for forging passports and used a UV light machine to make the fake documents appear authentic. Police were astonished by the level of expertise exhibited by the gang in creating counterfeit passports, despite their limited education, with only up to 10th grade completed. 

Even though they worked as a gang for the past one year, Iliyaz had been involved in forging documents for nearly 15 years. He was previously arrested for the same offence in 2003 and 2007 and served jail sentences as a result. A total of 160 fake passports were seized from the gang.