Masud Alam
The Mobile Court of Rapid Action Battalion-2 arrested 24 touts who were roaming around the Agargaon Passport Office and pestering passport applicants on Tuesday. They have either been fined or jailed in accordance with their offenses.
Shahidul Islam, Deputy Assistant Director of RAB-2 informed, “24 members of the tout circle were captured from in front of the passport office at Agargaon around noon. RAB’s Executive Magistrate Md. Helal Uddin fined or jailed the touts in correspondence with the crimes they confessed upon questioning.” 14 of them were jailed and 10 fined.
He also informed, “The tout circle used to wander around the passport office and the Sonali Bank premises where the passport applicants stand in lines to pay their fees. They target these applicants and offer to fill out and attest their forms, submit their fees for them, provide counterfeit papers for the documents they lack etc. They even offered to have passports made very quickly without verification if paid of 2,000-6,000 taka. However, even if they were paid they were unable to supply passports in most cases. The passport office had issued notices against these frauds, but to no avail.”
Translated by: Sumaiya Kabir