Dhaka, Dec 10 (ANS) Authorities in Bangladesh have ordered cancellation of the Bangladeshi passport issued to Arabinda Rajkhowa, the chairman of the banned Indian insurgent outfit United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), officials here said Thursday.
A top police official, on condition of anonymity, told bdnews24.com web site Thursday that a recommendation has been made to cancel the passport and take action against the officer who had verified the information in Rajkhowa’s passport application.

The passport was acquired “with few hurdles, using a fake name and address”.

Rajkhowa posed as Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury, citing business as his profession, and provided his photo and addresses of Dhanmondi in the national capital and a place in the Moulvibazaar district.

His passport was issued at Dhaka regional passport under “very urgent” category Feb 5, 2008, the day it was applied for, at an urgent fee of Tk 6,000 ($100 approximately).

The Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police sorted out the application form after his arrest and was confirmed after a back-check that it was of Rajkhowa.

The ULFA chief in the application gave a fake national identity card number.

Mohammed Rafiqul Islam, deputy director of the passport division under Dhaka regional passport office, said the passport was still effective although there is a provision to cancel a passport within one month, if it was proved that the information were false or provided mistakenly.

The application states Rajkhowa’s parents’ name as Abdul Gaffar Chowdhury and Sajeda Begum and the permanent address at Pakuria village under Akhailkura union of Moulvibazar district.

The Moulavibazar correspondent of bdnews24.com said no one by that name lived in the village. Union Parishad chairman Shamim Ahmed said nobody by the name of Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury or his parents had ever lived in the village.

Amulya Kumar Chowdhury, officer-in-charge of Moulavibazar Police Station, said no verification report was issued from this police station on that name.

However, the flat and house numbers stated as the contact address at Road 9/A in Dhanmondi were unclear. None was found by that name after a search on several possible houses on that road.

Rajkhowa’s application reads “by birth” in the citizenship option of the application and his date of birth was stated as July 27, 1965.

The application form was attested by Zamirul Islam, a lecturer of the Department of Agricultural Botany at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, who mentioned he knew the ULFA leader for three years.

But no lecturer by that name taught in the university and the given mobile number was unreachable.

Asked why legal steps were not taken against the passport holder, Abdul Qader, special police superintendent in the passport division, told bdnews24.com: “It’s a matter of one year back and I was not on duty then.

“But it will be checked why the fake names and addresses were not detected in the verification,” he added.

A senior official of an intelligence agency told bdnews24.com although Rajkhowa was issued the passport, he could not use it while travelling to other countries.

But no strict step was taken regarding this as cancelling of the passport might catch attention, the official added.

Earlier, two Indian terrorists Daud Merchant and Zahid Sheikh were arrested with Bangladeshi passports in fake names - Abdur Rahman and Arif Sheikh, respectively.

Moreover, there are allegations against the middlemen and some dishonest staff of the passport office who help issuing passports in fake names.

The ULFA chief was arrested near the India-Bangladesh border at Dawki in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya along with his wife and their two children, India’s Border Security Force recently announced.

His personal bodyguard Raja Bora, the deputy commander-in-chief of the ULFA’s military wing Raju Barua and others were also detained.