By S.A. Ishaqui
Hyderabad, May 15: Human trafficking rackets used beauticians to alter their clients' looks so that they more or less resembled the photographs affixed to original passports.
Several clients were "touched up" by beauticians before they appeared for interviews at the diplomatic missions of various countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.Arrested travel agent Rasheed told interrogators that racketeers usually picked passports that matched the facial features of those who wanted to be smuggled out.
"Once this was ensured, we sent them to a beautician for the finishing touches," he told the police. "Later they attended interviews at the consulates. We mostly used Mumbai-based beauticians."He disclosed that some times the racketeers used to "purchase" passports of lookalikes. But, in most cases, the clients managed quite well with the help of beauticians.
The rackets also occasionally made use of beauticians in Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. They were paid Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000, depending on the degree of alteration needed.Meanwhile, sleuths of the city's Central Crime Station produced Rasheed before the XIIth additional chief metropolitan court on Tuesday and the judge directed that he be remanded to judicial custody till May 18.
The court rejected the bail petitions of TRS MLA Lingaiah and Rasheed and granted conditional bail to Muzaffar Ali Khan, a former TD corporator. The police informed the court that they had seized eight passports, a computer hard disk, telephone dairy and photographs and ration cards of Jagdish Patel and Sangeetha Ben Patel from Rasheed.
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