Mahesh Acharya

A few weeks ago, Delhi police arrested five Nepali women, Saudi Arabia bound, at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) after they were found to be possessing forged Nepali passports.

Two days following the incident, another group of Saudi bound Nepali women—10 of them—was held for the same reason.

Niranjan Hojai, commander of a rebel group fighting an armed secessionist revolt in Assam and Nagaland states of India, was arrested in Kathmandu and later found to be possessing a Nepali passport and citizenship certificate.

An official at the Nepali embassy in New Delhi, while verifying documents recently, came across a passport issued in the name of a Nepali citizen but which had the photo of a Bangladeshi national.Cases of Indian students getting enrolled under the foreign quota in Indian universities by using Nepali citizenship documents are now being investigated by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

These are just a few representative cases that are enough to gauge the sinister complexities poised by document forgery. It would be hard to believe that the governments of Nepal and India, the Nepali embassy in New Delhi, Indian security agencies and India-based NGOs and INGOs, have not been aware of such incidents that occur daily. However, stringent action from aforesaid authorities has hardly been taken.

‘Mini administration’

To concur with a cliché from an embassy official, the racketeers involved in forging Nepali documents are running a kind of ‘Mini Nepali administration’ in the Indian capital. Whether it is handwritten passports, citizenship certificates, labour stickers, police reports essential  to work in Gulf countries, or health and foreign ministry documents to permit the donation of kidneys, one can easily obtain false copies after paying Indian Rupees (INR) 1,500 to 50,000 to forgery experts. A few forged documents the Post obtained after an investigation show clearly that it is almost impossible for ordinary people to mark the physical
differences vis-à-vis the original documents.

In most cases of passport forgery, the photo of the person to whom the document is originally issued, is replaced by another’s. As for other cases, forgery experts are found to be filling blank handwritten passports themselves after which they attach a photo, put a stamp and sticker, and laminate the document, said investigating officials. The forgery racketeers charge INR 1,500 for a citizenship certificate and INR 5,000 for a passport for Nepali citizens and up to INR 15,000 and INR 50,000, respectively, for Indian and third country nationals. Investigations thus far have revealed that the racketeers are mostly Nepali citizens working abroad who could not return to the country for various reasons and that illiterate workers vying for jobs in Gulf countries have been their easy prey.

A weak embassy            

It has been nearly six months since concerned officials at the Nepali embassy in New Delhi submitted a report of a ground investigation. But no action has been initiated even though  names and locations where the racketeers currently reside have been revealed. “We have requested the Indian Ministry of External Affairs for necessary action,” said acting ambassador Khaganath Adhikari. No action from Indian authorities, however, has been reported thus far.

A poor coordination between the Nepali embassy and India’s security agencies has also neglected handling the 15 Saudi Arabia bound Nepali women who  now languish at the Tihar jail in New Delhi. Delhi police had not informed the embassy about their apprehension and the embassy, having learned about the incident from the media, is now sitting arms folded,  waiting for Maiti India—a branch of Maiti Nepal in India—to take up the issue instead.

These lapses aside, the embassy in New Delhi has often found itself in a difficult position. Verifying Nepali documents has been cumbersome as the embassy has no scientific mechanisms to detect forgery. It has also been time consuming for them to cross-check records with papers back home. “Concerned authorities in Nepal usually take a long time to respond to our request. It has been annoying to make calls and send faxes repeatedly just for the verification of a single document,” expressed an official. Besides, the embassy itself is not a law enforcement agency that can apprehend those involved in illegal activities concerning its country.

From Kathmandu to Delhi 

Hundreds of handwritten passport booklets are being transported to Delhi from Kathmandu at regular intervals. The blank handwritten booklets make a considerable portion of the total quantum arriving in Delhi, informed an investigating officer.

The racketeers seem to be taking advantage of a situation where hundreds of handwritten passport booklets have gone unused after the Machine Readable Passport (MRP) system was enforced. “Those working in concerned government offices in Nepal might have been involved in transporting the passports to Delhi too,” the officer said. “The nexus in the racket involving forgery of Nepali documents is very big. Strong steps should be taken from Kathmandu itself,” commented another high-level official. Thus far, activists like Kavi Karki of Help Nepali Mission—an NGO based in New Delhi—have been prodding the government to cancel all handwritten passports and make MRP compulsory to tackle the problem of forgery.

A threat to national security

Needless to say, the illicit use of documents such as passports and citizenship certificates is a grave violation of the land’s law and a threat to the national image. “If a national from another country who illegally possesses a Nepali passport gets involved in criminal activities, it will be our country whose image will suffer,” said a high-level official. He also informed that citizens of some South Asian countries, who are banned to work in some Gulf countries, are using forged Nepali documents to work there. “Nepalis are losing jobs and Nepal’s image is worsening too.”

Indian students using forged Nepali documents

In a technical college of Punjab last year, 12 Indian students were found to have enrolled as Nepali citizens. Following this, 65 suspicious applicants who registered as Nepali students in a college in Jaipur, were investigated by the CBI; the process is ongoing, according to Umakant Parajuli, who recently returned to Kathmandu after completing his tenure as Minister of Culture and Education at the embassy in New Delhi. Parajuli underscored the need of adopting stronger security features and establishing mechanisms at different places apart from New Delhi to speed up the verification of documents.

Published on: 24 December 2011 | The Kathmandu Post