A Bangladeshi national, armed with a certificate issued by a central government official, had obtained an Indian passport in Calcutta after having failed to do so in Ghaziabad.

The immigration authorities in the city later detected the fraud and issued a country-wide alert against Sukdeb Brahmachari, leading to his arrest at Delhi airport on Monday night.

Brahmachari, 36, had acquired the passport from the Regional Passport Office, Calcutta, under the Tatkal scheme in 2006. His address in the application was that of an ashram in Betaijitpur Gosaipara, in Nadia’s Tehatta.

The verification certificate was signed by a senior official in the information and broadcasting ministry, said an immigration department source.

Acting on a tip-off, the department had on March 27 asked the superintendent of Nadia police to find out whether the address proof submitted by Brahmachari was genuine.

“No one by that name stays there. The man’s documents are all false,” said police superintendent H.K. Kusumakar.

A probe revealed that Brahmachari frequented the Nadia ashram till the death of its head in 1998. He went there again in 2006, before submitting his passport application to the Calcutta office.

After receiving a report from the police, the immigration department asked the regional passport officer to impound Brahmachari’s passport immediately. “We had also issued an alert to immigration posts across the country,” said Basab Talukdar, the deputy commissioner (security control) and foreigners' regional registration officer in Calcutta.

On Monday night, Brahmachari was about to board a US-bound flight of Jet Airways from Indira Gandhi International Airport when he was caught by immigration officials.

“We have come to know that in 2005, Brahmachari had applied for a passport in Ghaziabad identifying himself as Sukdeb Das. But he failed,” said Talukdar.

The authorities are “trying to find out why the senior official in the Union ministry issued the false certificate” to Brahmachari. Section 12 (2) of the Passport Act, 1967, states that a person issuing an “incorrect verification certificate” is liable to be prosecuted.

Officials said Brahmachari’s case is not unique. “Touts, in collusion with a section of passport officials and tour operators, arrange for fake passports against an amount ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000,” said an official. “There are several persons in the city possessing more than one passport.”

The incident comes to light shortly after The Telegraph reported that 500 passports had gone missing from the Dubai consulate.