Abu Salem's associate sentenced to jail for fraud in 1997 passport case

A special CBI court in Lucknow on Wednesday dismissed the plea of a passport agent against his conviction two years ago for helping gangster Abu Salem and his wife in getting a fake passport in 1997, officials said.The court sent Mohammed Parvez Alam to jail in the case.

A special CBI court in Lucknow on Wednesday dismissed the plea of a passport agent against his conviction two years ago for helping gangster Abu Salem and his wife in getting a fake passport in 1997, officials said.

The court sent Mohammed Parvez Alam to jail in the case. The officials said the CBI Special Task Force had registered a case on October 16, 1997 against Salem under sections related to criminal conspiracy, cheating and violations of the Passport Act for getting fake passports in the name of Akil Ahmed Azmi and wife Sabina Azmi using the services of the passport agent.

Salem and his wife Samira Jumani had fled the country after the 1993 Bombay blasts using fake passports. The serial blasts in the financial capital of the country on March 12, 1993, orchestrated on the directions of terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, had killed more than 250 people.

Alam, a resident of Sarai Mir in Azamgarh, who was known to Salem filled the passport forms in his own handwriting after the blasts took place to help him escape the country by hiding his true identity.

He helped Salem and Jamani get fake passports under assumed identity of Akil Ahmed Azmi and Sabina Azmi, respectively from the Lucknow passport office on July 6, 1993.

The Special Task Force of the CBI had filed a charge sheet on July 1, 1999.

Two years ago, a special judicial magistrate convicted Alam and Salem in the case and sentenced him two to three years of sentence under various offences. Alam had challenged the conviction before the appellate court.

A special CBI Judge in the Lucknow court dismissed his appeal and confirmed the sentences awarded to him, the officials said.

The court on Wednesday sent Alam to prison. Salem is already in jail.

''Abu Salem was detained in Lisbon (Portugal) on September 18, 2002 and thereafter a request for his extradition was made by the Government of India in nine cases which were pending against him. After a long-drawn legal battle, Abu Salem was extradited to India in November, 2005,'' the agency had said in a statement.

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