B'wood producer held for human trafficking

A Bollywood film producer has been arrested here along with his accomplice for allegedly helping several people immigrate abroad on tampered travel documents, the police said on Friday.

Sleuths of the Delhi Police's Special Cell arrested Irshad Ahmed, 30, and Bikram Kesari Sahu, 32, from Nehru Place area in south Delhi on Wednesday after they received a tip-off from the Mumbai Police about the immigration racket.

According to the police, Ahmed, a co-producer and a man close to some bigwigs in the Hindi film industry, in order to make quick bucks collected Rs 900,000 each from several people in Delhi, Mumbai and other parts of north India to get them visa for Europe and other countries.

"They tampered passports that carries visa rejection stamps and applied for visa under the pretext of a film shoot in Italy. Each and every person from whom the money was collected was assigned a role accordingly, such as cameraman, assistant producer, spot boy and other unit members," said a senior police official.

The police said the racket was exposed after the Italian embassy discovered a couple of tempered passports and reported the matter to the Crime Investigation Department (CID), Mumbai.

"We have produced them before a court here and handed them over to the Mumbai police, which are investigating the case," the official said.

The police refused to divulge the details of those who allegedly travelled abroad with Ahmed's help.