A member of the Indian parliament has been arrested at the international airport in Delhi for trying to smuggle a woman and a teenage boy to Canada using his own family’s passports.
Police said today that they had arrested Babubhai Katara, a member of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and his companions as they tried to board an Air India flight to Toronto yesterday.
Immigration officials alerted the police after noticing that the woman and the boy did not match the photographs in the passports they were carrying, which belonged to Mr Katara’s wife and son.
Relatives of the woman, identified as 26-year-old Paramjeet Kaur, said they had paid an agent in the northern state of Punjab three million rupees (£36,000) to arrange for her to join her husband in Canada.
“We didn’t know how they were taking her. We don’t know who the man is, I just came to know he is an MP,” Ms Kaur’s mother-in-law told India’s CNN-IBN television news network.
Mr Katara’s lawyer said his client was innocent and blamed the incident on a conspiracy between Ms Kaur and the travel agent.
The arrest highlights the problem of illegal migration from India, especially Punjab, which accounts for the largest number of illicit Indian migrants despite being one of its richest states.
But it is also a shocking illustration of the criminalisation of Indian politics, which analysts say is undermining the country’s democratic system and becoming a significant obstacle to economic growth.
A 2004 study by an independent watchdog found that nearly a quarter of the more than 540 members of parliament’s lower house faced criminal charges, including murder and rape.
The BJP sought to limit the fallout from the scandal by immediately suspending Mr Katara and promising to expel him as soon as police had completed their investigation.
“This is a very serious offence. We cannot tolerate this sort of behaviour in the party or in parliament,” Prakash Javadekar, a BJP spokesman, told The Times.
“This is a warning signal to all those who become involved in corruption and criminality.” He insisted that any criminal charges against other BJP members of parliament were politically motivated.
But the BJP’s political opponents were quick to exploit the incident, which came in the midst of crucial elections in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically important state.
“This is the true face, nature and character of the BJP,” said Abhishek Singhvi, a spokesman for the ruling Congress Party.
A statement from Congress’s coalition partner, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said: “The BJP, instead of talking about its clean image . . . should ponder why it has become a refuge for venal and corrupt people.” Police said Mr Katara, 46, and his companions had been charged with “cheating by impersonation, forgery for cheating, using forged documents, misuse of passports and criminal conspiracy”.
Local media reported that Mr Katara had arrived at the airport only half an hour before the flight and sent his staff to hurry his group through check-in and security — common practice for Indian VIPs.
A Delhi court ordered Mr Katara to spend ten days in police custody and sent the teenager, identified as Amarjeet Singh, 17, to a remand home, pending further inquiries.
Ms Kaur was given four days in police custody.
The court was also told that Mr Katara had taken another person to a foreign country on his wife’s passport. The couple both have diplomatic passports.
The incident is the latest in a string of recent scandals that have tarnished the reputation of India’s political elite.
Last year, a Cabinet minister was given a life sentence for kidnapping and murdering an aide who was blackmailing him.
In 2005 a television sting operation caught 11 MPs on camera receiving money in exchange for asking questions in parliament.
Article published in http://e-paper.timesonline.co.uk/
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