New Delhi, Sep 19 (IANS) With the arrest of seven persons, Delhi Police on Wednesday unearthed a complete lab used in printing fake visas and forging passports in the capital.
Besides arrest of the seven members of the syndicate, police have recovered large numbers of documents, passports, various countries' arrival and departure stamps, forged holograms and much more from the possession of the accused.
According to Rajesh Deo, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Crime Branch, the agents involved in the racket have been identified as Jitender Kumar Mandal, a resident of Dhangarhi in Nepal, Pradeep Kumar Kattamuri, a vagabond and resident of Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, and Vipin Sharma, a resident of Paharganj in Delhi.
"While the mastermind behind the syndicate has been identified as Manjeet and his associate has been identified as Vijay Kumar, both residents of Vaishali in Uttar Pradesh. Police have also arrested two middlemen identified as Gagan Singh and Asha Rani and the printer identified as Jitender Kumar," said the DCP.
A complaint was received that, three Nepalese nationals were duped to the tune of Rs 14-15 lakh by Jitendra, Bijay, Biren and Binod on the pretext of providing them jobs in Canada.
During investigation, the forged visa stickers were provided by Gagan, he was nabbed and disclosed that, Asha provided the stickers after which she was also arrested. Asha revealed that Vijay provided her the stickers.
Accordingly, Vijay was also arrested, who disclosed that the forged stickers were prepared by Manjeet Singh who was also arrested and on his instance a complete unit of printing forged stickers and passports including forged visa stickers of Canada and Schengen, forged passports, forged bio-data pages of Indian passports and other devices were seized.
The gang usually targeted young job aspirants from Nepal who wanted to get jobs in foreign countries. They lured them initially in Nepal by giving them false assurance of providing them good jobs in Canada.
Thereafter, they took an initial amount from them in Nepal itself and then they used to call them to Delhi and take their passports for allegedly depositing them in the Embassy of Canada for the purpose of applying for the visas.
However, instead they would affix forged visa stickers on their passports and send the victims pictures and visa stickers on their mobile phones through Whatsapp and after taking the balance amount they would disappear, the DCP said.
--IANS
adv/kr
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)