sale of official "white" passports of Army soldiers to illegal immigrants

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CBI to probe sale of Army officials' passports-India-The Times of India

CBI to probe sale of Army officials' passports
27 Nov 2007, 0012 hrs IST,TNN

NEW DELHI: The defence ministry (MoD) has asked the CBI to "thoroughly investigate" the scam behind the sale of official "white" passports of Army soldiers to illegal immigrants. This comes after a soldier, Suresh Babu, who was part of the Army HQ band which went to Germany on an official tour in early-September, was caught after he allegedly sold four official passports of his colleagues to illegal immigrants for Rs 50,000 each.

Though Babu was escorted back to India in "preventive custody" after the scam was detected with the arrest of the four illegal immigrants at Indira Gandhi International Airport, the defence ministry is worried that this could be part of a larger organised racket in the sale of Indian maroon-coloured diplomatic and white official passports.

While maroon coloured passports are given to diplomats, white passports are issued to government officials for a specified period of stay abroad.

Though Babu is the only Army personnel to be arrested in the scam so far, he has apparently disclosed under interrogation that he had arranged maroon diplomatic passports for a brigadier and his wife and a colonel, which they were clearly not entitled to. To add to the suspicion of an organised scam at work, the entire file of passports issued to the Army band seems to have gone missing.

"The passport racket scam could well be widespread... it has security implications. We want the CBI to investigate the case from all angles," said an official.

Risking ones own carrier and national security for petty 50'000- is insane

 

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The Peninsula On-line: Qatar's leading English Daily
Army faces human trafficking probe
Web posted at: 11/28/2007 0:31:58
Source ::: AFP

NEW DELHI • Indian military personnel are under investigation for suspected human trafficking, senior officials said yesterday.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was called in after the defence ministry rejected the army's plan for an internal probe, said one official who asked not to be named.

The affair came to light when four civilians were caught this month at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport trying to leave for Germany on military passports.

"We declined the army headquarters' suggestion for an internal probe because a wider implication is suspected," the official said.

CBI spokesman G Mohanty declined comment. The civilians obtained the passports as part of a batch issued for a military band to perform in Germany.

"Additional documents were to be returned if not used but instead photographs of civilians were stuck on four of them and the passports were endorsed by an army headquarters officer," a ministry official said.

"The four who were arrested this month were trying to use the tampered papers to leave the country," she added.

The story broke after the parliament set up a panel in May to probe a long-running trafficking racket involving five MPs who supplied false papers for money.

Two years ago, the CBI framed criminal charges against a senior Indian diplomat for trafficking after nine members of a government-sponsored dance troupe disappeared upon leaving the country. The case is still being heard.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates about 150,000 people are annually trafficked in south Asia, making the region second only to southeast Asia for human trafficking.