"Four Sri Lankans were stopped by law-enforcement officers while attempting to fly to Europe through Uzbekistan using fake Malaysian passports in early April," it said.

In an interview, a judge of the Tashkent city’s Sergeli district criminal court, Khayrullo Tolaganov, said that using the fake passports, the culprits entered Uzbekistan from Kazakhstan. Here, “they planned to get fake visas with the assistance of their accomplice and leave for Europe,” Tolaganov said.

A report said that a man called Seva (name phonetic) provided the criminals with fake passports and charged each of them US$5,000 for this.

It also said that the culprits lived in Uzbekistan for over one month after Uzbek citizen, Mahmudjon Yoldoshev, helped them to obtain “visas and other necessary documents”. For his part, commenting on the case, Yoldoshev said that he did not know that the passports were forged.

The Tashkent city’s Sergeli district criminal court sentenced the foreigners and their local accomplice to seven years in prison each, the report concluded.