Rohingya man’s bid to obtain Bangladeshi passport foiled

A Rohingya man was arrested from Khulna on Monday while he was trying to obtain a Bangladeshi passport illegally.

Officials of the Khulna Divisional Passport Office caught the Rohingya man while he was providing his fingerprint for passport. He had used fake address and documents.

The arrestee Ekram Ullah, 29, is from Merulola area in Rakhine state in Myanmar.

Towfiqul Islam, director of Khulna Divisional Passport Office, said they detained Ekram around 3pm at the passport office.

"His fingerprints matched with the one from the database of Rohingya people," he said. "Ekram used fake address of Railway Colony in Khulna and took help from a broker."

But the middleman could not be arrested.

Momtajul Islam, officer-in-charge of Sonadanga Police Station, said the Divisional Passport Office authority handed over the Rohingya man to them.

"Ekram told us that he had entered Bangladesh three years ago. His mother Arifa Khatun had been living at a Rohingya camp in Cox's Bazar," OC added.

Bangladesh is currently hosting over 1.1 million Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar, and most of them arrived here after August 25, 2017.

There are allegations that Rohingyas are getting involved in various criminal activities and many of them have gone abroad using illegally obtained Bangladeshi passports.

In 2015, the then expatriates welfare and overseas employment minister said that an estimated 50,000 Rohingyas were staying in foreign countries using Bangladeshi passports.