The Kolkata Police on Wednesday issued a notice against 69 people, whose passports were impounded during the probe into the Bengal passport scam.

On March 13, the city police had submitted a chargesheet naming 130 persons accused in the scam, including 120 Bangladeshi nationals who had allegedly obtained Indian passports using fake documents.

“It is not yet clear whether all the 69 persons against whom look out notices have been issued are Bangladeshi nationals,” said a senior police officer.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) had arrested 10 people including the masterminds, Manoj Gupta and Samaresh Biswas, along with one Abdul Hai, a former sub-inspector of Kolkata Police, who had worked for three years with the Security Control Organisation (SCO) of the city police.

The SCO is responsible for passport enquiries made by the cops for every application submitted to the regional passport office by residents living in the jurisdiction of the city police.

A resident of North 24-Parganas, Habra, the cops had seized Rs. 12.5 lakhs from Hai’s account.

According to the investigators, Hai received Rs. 25,000 from Gupta and Biswas for processing a passport application bypassing the verification procedure.

According to the cops, the alleged kingpins would pay anywhere between Rs. 2,500-Rs.4,000 to agents and sub-agents who would find foreign nationals looking for an Indian passport. Another Rs. 6,000-Rs. 7,000 was paid to those who helped with procuring fake documents to be submitted along with the passport application.

Though the Aadhaar number submitted with the application would be an original one, the name and the photograph would be of a different person, the police said.

The SIT had found at least 200 such cases within the jurisdiction of Calcutta Police.

The cops had also arrested two contractual workers with the Passport Seva Kendra who helped upload the documents for a passport applicant for a payment of Rs. 2,000 to Rs. 3,000 per application.

The accused persons have been booked on charges of cheating, forgery, criminal breach of trust by a public servant, banker, merchant or agent, and criminal conspiracy along with charges under the Passport Act and Foreigners Act.

“Anomalies were found with the documents used to make the passports. The matter is being investigated,” said a senior police officer.