Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, has told crime branch officers that the passport with the name Riyasat Ali, on which he travelled to Saudi Arabia, was not the first fake passport given to him by Pakistan.
Jundal said that in May 2006 while he was on the run in the Aurangabad arms haul case, he took a Pakistan Airlines flight to Karachi from Dhaka with a passport, which had the name “Saeed”. This fake passport was given to him by Pakistan. He said that he was escorted by Pakistani authorities to the airport and was not stopped by immigration officials there.
“As soon as Jundal came to know that the ATS had seized the huge cache of arms in Aurangabad in which he was also involved, Jundal fled to Malegaon. From Malegaon he again took a bus to Aurangabad but preferred to stay inside a mosque fearing arrest,” said a senior crime branch officer.
The officer said that Jundal was helped by one person to go to Kolkata. “A man helped him reach Kolkata by train in May 2006. The person took him to Benapur in Morshidabad near the Bangladesh border in West Bengal,” the officer said without revealing the identity of the person.
Jundal, the officer said, then crossed the border and entered Bangladesh. “He stayed in Dhaka for about a week after which he took a Pakistan Airlines flight to Karachi. Jundal told us that he was given a fake passport with the name of Saeed. It also mentioned that ‘Saeed’ was a Pakistani national. He also said that once he reached the airport in Karachi, he was escorted by a few Pakistani men and was not questioned by the immigration authorities,” he said.
The officer said that this was the first fake passport given to him by Pakistan who later gave him another passport which had the name “Riyasat Ali”, using which he went to Saudi Arabia.