Home
+
Published : 21 Jul 2026, 04:16 PM
The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has arrested seven members of a ring accused of sending migrants to Italy using someone else's passport and visa.
It said the ring came to light while investigating a complaint that a woman's passport and visa had been used to send another person to Italy instead.
Officers recovered 56 passports, 153 seals of several kinds, a laptop, three CPUs and Tk 250,000 in cash from the group.
On Monday, the CID said investigators arrested the suspects during a raid in Dhaka's Gulshan-1 on Sunday.
According to the department, the complainant's husband has been living in Italy for years. She applied for visas to travel there with her husband and their four children.
While renewing her passport, she reportedly met one of the suspects, who promised to arrange an Italian visa and introduced her to the racket through a travel agency.
The suspects later collected Tk 440,000 from her in instalments.
But when she arrived at the airport with her children to travel to Italy, immigration officials informed her that another woman had already travelled to Italy on Apr 24 using the Italian visa issued in her passport.
The victim then filed a complaint with the CID's anti-human trafficking unit, prompting the investigation.
CID’s preliminary findings suggest the suspects collected money from people seeking to go abroad by promising Italian visas and a better life. They then kept the applicants' passports and, through fraud, used their visas to send other people overseas.
The CID said its investigation indicates that the alleged ringleader, Belayet Hossain, has sent around 30 people to Italy using the same method since 2016.
He was arrested in a similar case filed with Airport Police Station in 2024 but is currently out on bail.
The agency said forensic examination of the seized items is under way while investigators continue tracing the source and destination of financial transactions and identifying the racket's local and overseas associates.
