After the arrest of a Bangladeshi national at Thiruvananthapuram airport in Kerala on August 13 with a fake passport for travelling to Sri Lanka, the central agencies have upped their ante and have alerted the Tamil Nadu state intelligence for an increased surveillance of the fake passport racket. It is to be noted that Chennai and Madurai are two major towns of South India from where several earlier instances of fake racket cases were detected. According to a senior officer, the now defunct LTTE is also on a revival path and there are networks that support them to gain illegal and fake passports. In May 2022, a three-member gang was arrested by the Chennai city police for preparing fake passports. The arrested were identified as Mohammed Illiaz Sheik, Mohammed Bukhari and their assistant, Sivakumar. Police had then stated that it was Illyas who was the kingpin of the racket and had been jailed twice earlier for fake passport cases. A few months before, a Bangladeshi national was arrested with a fake passport at the Coimbatore airport and he had also then told the immigration officials that he got the fake passport from Chennai. Earlier, Senior intelligence operative of LTTE, Santukam alias Sabesan was arrested from Chennai in October 2021 after being involved in a Rs 3,000 crore drug smuggling racket. https://www.thehansindia.com/tamilnadu/tamil-nadu-intelligence-central-agencies-probe-fake-passport-racket-816283