Suspended Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament Babubhai Katara had allegedly obtained six passports for his "children" though he is a father of only three, says a chargesheet filed against him by police in connection with the human trafficking case.
Katara pasted the photographs of persons who were unrelated to him on the passports obtained for his "children" and these were used for smuggling two children out of the country, police alleged in the chargesheet filed in the court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kamini Lau.
"This shows the mens rea (intention) for using the passports for the purpose other than genuine ones like illegal human trafficking," it said adding, three passports were allegedly obtained by Katara for non-existent and fictitious persons.
The 46-year-old MP has three children -- Bhavesh, Gayatri and Amit -- whereas three passports were procured by him from the Delhi Regional Passport Office in the names of 'Rakesh, Rajesh and Priya', who he said were his offspring, police claimed.
On the basis of investigators by the Crime Branch, the chargesheet accused the MP of cheating the government by making "false declarations" and submitting "false documents" to get the passports.
All these passports were issued on a tatkal (emergency) basis and Katara reportedly enclosed with the applications photocopies of his diplomatic passport and that of his wife as well as electricity bills, police alleged in their chargesheet filed on July 16.
Investigations revealed that the photograph on the passport application form of Sharda Ben (Katara's wife) did not match her picture on a visa application in the US embassy, and this was reasonable ground to believe that the passport application was forged, police alleged.
"Even the signature on the diplomatic passport of Sharda Ben, which was being used to illegally traffic accused Paramjeet Kaur to Toronto and was recovered by airport authorities, has been found to be different from the one used by her," they claimed.
Katara, a second-term MP from Dahod in Gujarat, has been charged with trafficking three women and two children abroad in the past two years before his arrest on April 18.
All these persons travelled on the diplomatic passports of the MP's wife and children and he escorted them to their destinations to ensure a trouble-free journey, police said.
Katara was chargesheeted 88 days after his arrest and investigators have claimed that they have found sufficient evidence against him and five others to book them under the stringent Section 467 of IPC, which pertains to forgery of valuable security and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
The MP was nabbed while attempting to fly out Kaur and a 15-year-old boy to Toronto on the passports of his wife and son.
Subsequently, other accused -- Rajendra Kumar Gupta, Kiran Dhar, Sunder Lal Yadav, travel agents Satwant and Mohammed Rasheed -- were arrested for alleged complicity in the offence.
No charges have been filed against Rasheed so far.
