Inquiry into illegal immigration rackets being run out of Gujarat has revealed a direct link between clogged toilets at Istanbul airport in Turkey and India.
Probe agencies in Gujarat have found that agents tell illegal migrants from India, who land at the Istanbul airport, to tear their fake passports and flush them down the toilets. And this is the cause for choked toilets at the Istanbul airport, reveals a report by The Times of India.
The instructions to destroy fake Indian passports makes sense because if caught with the document, they could very well be deported back.
The Gujarat police swung into action following the discovery of frozen bodies of four Indians near the US-Canada border in January this year. The four people belonged to a family from Dingucha village in Gandhinagar. The police are probing various networks of human smuggling and the ways they employ to help migrants cross over into other countries, especially the US.
Also read: The ‘Indian’ resides only inside the pages of the passport
As per the media report, the Gujarat police have since busted eight such networks and many more are under surveillance.
The Turkey angle came into prominence when the investigators found that the travel agents take illegal migrants from India to US via Turkey and Mexico. In Turkey these migrants line up outside washrooms to destroy their Indian passports. Here, the Mexican agents issues them fresh passports, which shows these migrants as Mexican nationals.
Even if the migrants get caught, law enforcement officials find it difficult to track the agents who facilitated their movement.