Three Bangladeshi nationals were arrested at Sri Lanka’s central airport in Colombo on Monday while attempting to leave the country on doctored Malaysian visas, a senior Immigration and Emigration official said on Tuesday.
He said the trio aged 41, 37, and 19 years respectively had been listed on a on a scheduled flight to the Indian State of Hyderabad when they were picked up by suspicious officials from the Immigration and Emigration Border Enforcement Unit.
The three persons had earlier arrived in Sri Lanka from Nepal, the official attached to the Bandaranayke International Airport (BIA) said.
These days officials have been placed on extra alert at the BIA to thwart the activities of human traffickers, who are known to send people overseas on questionable travel and other documents sometimes with the alleged connivance of errant airport officials, he said.
It was only last month that the authorities set up a separate unit to scrutinize the travel documents of those leaving the country following a spike in human trafficking reports.
The Safe Migration Bureau is manned with officials from State intelligence, Immigration and Emigration and the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau (SLFEB).
According to officials thousands of Sri Lankans have left the country on foreign visit visas in search of lucrative employment overseas ever since the island-nation witnessed an economic free fall some two years ago.
