Four Lankans held at Delhi Airport

Four Sri Lankan nationals, including a woman, were arrested at Indira Gandhi International Airport on Monday night for allegedly attempting to board a Paris-bound flight on fraudulently obtained Indian passports that were tampered with.

A woman agent allegedly travelling with one of the accused is under the scanner.

The passengers were on their way to board flight to Paris via Bahrain when they were intercepted by immigration officials for verification of their travel papers.

They initially identified themselves as Suman Rajesekar, Devanesan Jaya, Neelagandan Ramasany and Balraj Kumar. Their passports were found to be genuine, but their pages had been altered, re-pasted and re-stitched.

Suspecting that something was amiss, the four were separately detained for questioning.

Separate cases have been registered against the four accused.

The accused were also interrogated by intelligence officials and at their instance, the police are trying to recover their original identification papers. The role of some airline staffers is also being probed. The Hindu