Passport fraud: Arrested Pak man planned to sneak into India in 2014, ED tells court

Rohit Khanna / May 2, 2025, 21:04 IST

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Passport fraud: Arrested Pak man planned to sneak into India in 2014, ED tells court

Kolkata: Enforcement Directorate officials believe that Ahammed Hossain Azad, the Pakistani national arrested in connection with running a passport racket in Bengal, started working on his plan to sneak into India way back in 2014. Azad (53) was arrested from Birati on April 15.
A girl from Bengal, whom he befriended in 2014 and took help from, died under "mysterious circumstances" in 2022. Though Azad planned to enter India before going to Bangladesh, he decided to get a Bangladeshi passport first. He got the Bangladeshi passport in 2017 and entered India in 2019.
The investigating agency submitted in court that the girl died under "mysterious circumstances" in 2022. ED officials believe the girl might have been killed as she was privy to sensitive information about Azad's past. ED claimed the evidence-on-record suggested that Azad was acting on instructions from persons based in Pakistan.
Azad married a woman named Maymuna Akhter in Bangladesh. He had two sons, Osama Bin Azad and Omar Faruk. While they are yet to be traced, ED officials suspect that Azad frequently visited Bangladesh to meet his family by illegally crossing the Bangla border.

After he came to Bengal, Azad obtained two different voter ID cards, one from Naihati and the other from Rajarhat-Gopalpur. By that time, he had changed his name to Ajad Mallik. During interrogation, Azad told ED officials that he even voted in the parliamentary and assembly polls. He also obtained two separate driving licences in the name of his assumed identity.
As his network spread, Azad floated a company called Mallik Trading Corporation. He got in touch with several agents across the country and helped illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh get visas in India and other countries. All this while, he remained in constant touch with his Pak handlers.
Azad opened accounts at two nationalised banks and deposited the ill-gotten money from forging documents in those accounts. He also siphoned off money to Bangladesh.