Bangladesh detains six for allegedly helping Rohingya forge documents for passports

The Rapid Action Battalion or RAB has detained six people in Narayanganj on charges of helping the Rohingya refugees obtain Bangladeshi passports by forging birth certificates.

RAB-2 also seized a huge amount of birth certificates and materials to forge the documents in a raid on three shops next to the regional passport office at Jalkuri in Siddhirganj on Wednesday afternoon.

The seized materials also include seals for birth certificates and hard disks with soft copies of the certificates, RAB-2 Superintendent of Police Mohiuddin Faruquee said.

The detained people are Saiful Islam, 24, Azim Hossain, 26, and Fazlul Karim, 33, of Siddhrganj, and Main Uddin, 38, and ‘Jahangir’, 36, of Dhaka, and Mamun Mia, 35, of Netrakona.

They were making the fake certificates after taking information from the national birth database server by using information from the original ones in collusion with officials of local government bodies like city corporation and union council, the RAB official said.

“They were helping the Rohingya obtain passport by making these birth certificates,” he said.

He said the six had confessed to helping 13 Rohingya refugees obtain Bangladeshi passports.

They were also helping convicts flee abroad by making them passports with fake identities, SP Mohiuddin said.

“They easily obtained passports as the information they had provided in the birth certificates matched the original ones in the birth certificate database server,” he said.