Two men who allegedly were in league to forge a Guyana passport by switching surnames in order to facilitate a trip to India were granted bail when they appeared before acting Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson yesterday.
Reaz Ali and Wazim Mohamed were both charged with conspiring with person(s) unknown to forge a Guyana passport between June 8, 2007 and June 23, 2010, in favour of Reaz Mohamed to show it was issued to Mohamed with a photo inserted, knowing same to be false.
Ali is further charged with uttering a Guyana passport in favour of Reaz Mohamed with a photo inserted to show it was issued by the Immigration Office, knowing same to be false.
They both pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Mohamed, 31, of 215 Lusignan West, East Coast Demerara who is a taxi driver was represented by attorney Gary Ramlochan who applied for reasonable bail to be granted to his client.
Ali was unrepresented and also resides at Lusignan West. He asked to be placed on bail since his mother is a heart patient and he takes care of her.
Meanwhile Prosecutor Stephen Telford in stating the facts of the case said that Ali had made an application for a passport in the name of Mohamed. He said that Ali had promised to donate one of his kidneys to Mohamed’s ailing mother. In order to do this, Ali secured a passport so that they could travel to India for the surgery.
He said further that Ali continued to travel to different countries using the name of Mohamed and recently made an application for a machine readable passport when it was discovered that the passport number was already issued to someone else. However, Telford said that he had no objection to bail for the defendants.
They were each granted $75,000 bail on the conspiracy charge while Ali was placed on $100,000 bail for uttering a forged document. The duo is to make their next court appearance on August 16.
