KATHMANDU, Feb 5: The original holders of machine readable passports (MRPs) that were later doctored are found to have been issued new passports in the past few months.
Seven out of the eight origional MRP holders have already been issued new MRPs from the Nepali embassy in Malaysia in the last eight months, according to records at the Department of Passport (DoP). Investigations by DoI show that all the eight passport holders are in Malaysia on work visas.
The issue of forged passports came to light after some migrant workers returning from Malaysia were found carrying the forged passports. Eight returnee migrants were carrying forged MPRs while seven others were carrying tampered travel documents for returning to Nepal from Malaysia in the last month. They were caught at Tribhuwan International Airport (TIA) on different dates for possessing the fake documents and are being detained at DoI.
Director General at DoI, Lok Bahadur Thapa, said, “Our records show all seven of them have been issued new passports. Two of them were issued the passports from their home towns while five were issued the documents from the Nepal embassy in Malaysia.”
He also said that the original bio pages of the forged passports don't have any issues and contain all the security features. The tampered sections of the forged passports do not contain any security features.
Thapa added that they have now made changes at the 'Lost Passport' section following this particular incident. Earlier, the records of lost passports would be updated only after people were issued replacement passports whereas DoP will henceforth put in a notice in the lost section before issuing the new passports.
SSP Sarmendra Khanal of Crime Investigation Division told Republica that they are carrying out a special operation to bust the racket involved in passport forgery.
“We are yet to establish if the original passport holders sold off their passports or they were duped by agents,” he added.
A series of interviews conducted by Republica with returnee migrant workers has established that the returnees were given forged MRPs by agents who charged them up to Rs. 85,000. The agents are said to be colluding in a setup with immigration officials in Malaysia.
The arrested migrant workers said that they were forced to get their travel documents from the agents after ending up in illegal status in the work destination countries. In Malaysia and some other destination countries, the status of the workers becomes illegal if they leave their jobs before their contracts ends and their passports are withheld by their employers. They also become illegals if they change jobs without the employer's permission.
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