Calcutta, India – August 15, 2014: Indian police with walkie talkie. Police squad the place with walkie talkie.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images
The Madhya Pradesh Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested a man from Afghanistan for allegedly getting an Indian passport using forged documents and two of his accomplices from Jabalpur, police said on Friday (August 1, 2025).
As per a statement from the M.P. Police, the accused — identified as Sohbat Khan, currently residing in Jabalpur, Dinesh Garg and Mahendra Kumar Sukhdan, both residents of Jabalpur — were arrested based on a tip off received by the city unit of the ATS. Mr. Garg is a forest guard in the Forest Guard and has been working in the election cell of the Jabalpur Collectorate for the past two years, the police said.
“The Jabalpur unit of the ATS had received a tip off from an informer that some Afghanistan nationals were living illegally in the city. Sohbat was living illegally in Jabalpur for the last 10 years and he had also married a local woman,” the police said.
Apart from having obtained his own passport using fake documents, Mr. Khan was also getting Indian passports made for his Afghan friends living in West Bengal and Chhattisgarh by preparing documents on wrong addresses in Jabalpur and taking money for them, the police added.
“So far, the ATS has received information about about 20 such Afghan youths whose passports were tried to be made from Jabalpur addresses, out of which passports of Akbar and Iqbal, residents of West Bengal, have been made from fake addresses of Jabalpur,” it said, adding that information about transactions of about ₹10 lakh has been obtained so far.
The police said that Mr. Khan is being questioned to find out about the people helping him in securing police verification, fake addresses from the post office and other necessary documents required for passports.
Published – August 02, 2025 01:57 am IST
