NEW DELHI, 22 April 2007 — A travel agent has accused two more federal lawmakers of links to a people-smuggling plot that saw an MP arrested for using family passports to try and fly a woman and a boy to Canada.
Bharatiya Janata Party MP Babubhai Katara was arrested Wednesday at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport along with the woman and her teenaged son minutes before the three were to board a Toronto-bound Air-India flight.
Sundarlal Yadav, a travel agent who was on the run, and two other suspects in the case — Rajendra Kumar Gampa and Kiran — were arrested yesterday, a senior Delhi police officer said.
“He was produced before a magistrate in court and there he named one BJP MP and another from the regional Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the human smuggling plot,” said one of the officers probing the case. The BSP has its base among the lower castes in northern India.
Yadav identified the MPs as Mohammed Tahir Khan of the BSP and Ramswaroop Koli of the BJP. Tahir Khan represents Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh while Koli represents Bayana in Rajasthan.
Yadav told the court that he had introduced two travel agents to the MPs. He added that he had received up to 100,000 rupees ($2,403) for the introduction but added he was unaware of any intention to smuggle people out.
Katara, the woman and her son were arrested after airport staff noticed that passport photographs of Katara’s wife and son in their passports did not match the faces of the woman and the teen.
Police suspect Katara of being involved in a scam to smuggle the two out of the country in return for cash and on Thursday, a Delhi court ordered Katara to spend 10 days in police custody and sent the teenager to a remand home, pending further inquiries. Police allege that Katara, who is a BJP MP from Dahod in Gujarat, had helped other women immigrate illegally in the past.
Tahir Khan claimed he was being implicated with political motives during a time when the staggered legislative assembly elections are being held in Uttar Pradesh.
He said: “This is a false charge against me. Since the Uttar Pradesh elections are under way, all these charges have political implications.”
The BSP MP conceded that he had frequently traveled abroad in recent past and had also gone to Pakistan. “But I have no connection with this.”
As for Koli, there was no response either from the MP or from any other BJP leader.
The scandal is the latest to embroil the country’s political classes. A number of politicians face criminal charges but their cases have still to be resolved under India’s slow-moving justice system.
