Emigration officers at Katunayake Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) arrested a person against whom a travel ban has been imposed by the Minuwangoda Magistrate Court, while he was attempting to leave for Thailand using a forged passport early Saturday morning. He is a 64-year-old businessman residing in the Colombo area.
He had arrived at the airport to board a Thai Airways flight leaving for Bangkok and had been arrested by the officers on suspicion after thoroughly inspecting his documents relating to the journey.
It has later been revealed that his passport was a forged one and the emigration stamp placed on it also a fake one.
According to the Immigration and Emigration Department system, officers have identified that the passport he had used earlier was also a forged one. Court had imposed the travel ban on this businessman relating to another forged documents preparation case, where he had attempted to send a Sri Lankan to Italy using forged documents and got arrested at BIA when the attempt failed. On Saturday, he had attempted to leave the country to evade the court relating to this case, it was reported.
The Border Control officers of the airport had handed him over to the Criminal Investigation Department unit of the BIA for further investigations.
T.K.G. Kapila