RIYADH, 28 August 2005 — The Indian Embassy has warned Indian expatriates against carrying bogus passports and said possession of such documents is not only illegal but could also land their next of kin in trouble in the event of accident-related death involving the payment of blood money to the victim’s close relatives.

NRIs have also been cautioned against patronizing the peddlers of forged documents that are sold clandestinely in downtown Batha and Al-Hayyil Wuzarat areas, where the Saudi police launched raids recently as part of their crackdown on the racketeers.

The story of fake documents came to light recently when an Indian expatriate died in a road accident in Riyadh recently, an embassy spokesman told Arab News. When the embassy tried to contact the next of kin of the deceased, they were in for a shock.

It transpired that the victim had traveled on a forged Indian passport with the connivance of his friend back in India, who had worked in the Kingdom before. Embassy inquiries revealed that they were good friends and that the holder of the original passport wanted to help his friend make a living in Saudi Arabia this way.

The truth came to light only when the forged passport-holder got involved in a road accident and succumbed to his forgeries. It is not the first time, though, that forged passport-holders created problems for their next of kin.

In mid-1980s a group of Indians flying from New Delhi to Riyadh lost their lives when the aircraft by which they were traveling met with an accident. The same question arose when the airline officials tried to contact the families of the victims. There were no takers of compensation: The passports had been forged.

The forged documents racket again came to the fore when V.V.Narayanan, first secretary (welfare) at the Indian Embassy, discovered that his signature had been forged on a fake Indian Embassy letterhead in connection with a letter of temporary authorization. When Narayanan questioned the bearer of that letter to try to get to the root of the racket, the person excused himself for an urgent call and disappeared.