The Hindu : New Delhi News : Foreign travel racket busted

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Thursday, Jul 02, 2009
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New Delhi

Foreign travel racket busted

Staff Reporter

Six arrested for obtaining PoE permissions using forged visa letters

Police claim to have seized 90 passports, blank stamp papers and other documents
‘They used to send labourers to several countries, especially Arab nations’

NEW DELHI: Two travel agents and four employees have been arrested by the Crime Branch of the Delhi police on charges of procuring Protector of Emigrant (PoE) permission for labourers using forged documents. The police claim to have seized visas bearing fake information, about 90 passports, blank stamp papers and other documents from them.

The Crime Branch received a tip-off that some travel agents had been procuring PoE sanctions -- required for people seeking employments abroad -- based on forged visa letters. The accused sent people abroad to work as labourers, but showed them as skilled workers on paper to obtain PoE sanctions from the Ministry of Indian Overseas Affairs.

Developing the lead, teams led by Inspector Ved Prakash zeroed in on two travel agents, Saikat Dass of Surya International and Vikas Kumar Jai of Global Trading Cooperation on Mata Sundri Marg. They mounted raids at both the offices on June 17. During a search, a passport with forged travel/work visa along with 39 other passports, eight office stamps, over 50 blank stamp papers, five computer hard-discs, a scanner and a printer were purportedly seized from the office of Surya International. In all, 51 passports and 31 office stamps and a hard disc were seized from the second office.

Subsequently the travel agents were arrested along with their employees, Sanjay Singh, Mohammad Adil, Surender Kumar and Mehfooz Alam.

During interrogation, the accused purportedly disclosed that they used to send labourers to several countries, especially Arab nations, by obtaining PoE permissions using forged visa letters. As labourers are not issued PoE sanctions as a policy matter, the accused scanned the visa letters issued for labourers by the companies requiring their services and replaced the employment categories with those of skilled workers like drivers, masons or carpenters using computers.

Based on the forged visa letters, they would manage to get PoE clearances.

The police suspect that the accused, who had been operating for the past three years, had sent about 100 people abroad using the same modus operandi in the past few months. They charged handsome sums from the applicants to send them abroad for employment as labourers.

The accused used to get clients from different parts of the country, including Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Bihar.

PoE officials

As they had obtained PoE sanctions from the Delhi, Kolkata, Chandigarh and Mumbai offices, the police are investigating the role of the PoE officials attached to those offices. The seized computer hard discs are being sent to forensic laboratory to find out more about the racket. The police are examining the role of another travel agent based in Connaught Place. According to the police, Saikat earlier worked as a visa executive with a travel agency but started his own business along with Sanjay and Adil in 2005.

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