Visa racket busted, four arrested
Four alleged fraudsters operating a phony travel agency that supplied fake foreign visas were arrested on Wednesday, reports Robbie Corey-Boulet.
Four alleged fraudsters operating a phony travel agency that supplied fake foreign visas were arrested on Wednesday after police ensnared two suspects near south Delhi’s Defence Colony market.
The suspects supplied fake visas to customers after tampering with their passports and preparing forged supporting documents, police said.
“The racket probably began about two months ago and fooled an estimated 40 people. Each victim paid Rs 20,000 when first submitting a visa request and followed that up with Rs 4 lakh upon completion of an order,” said Alok Kumar, DCP, Special Cell.
The police have identified Nakul Kohli as the leader of the racket. Police said he was involved in seven previous cheating cases.
A team led by ACP LN Rao received an anonymous tip Wednesday that Kohli planned to deliver visas and passports to an accomplice in Defence Colony. At 5.40 pm, they spotted him in a Skoda Octavia car parked near a school in Defence Colony. Five minutes later, a man later identified as Javed Khan entered the car and took from Kohli an envelope containing four tampered passports and two fake visas. The two were then arrested.
Subsequent raids of the suspects’ rented offices in Gautam Nagar and Laxmi Nagar yielded, among other things, 35 tampered passports, fake visa stickers, 39 fake job permits and seven rubber stamps from departments in New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada.
The third suspect, Naveen Malhotra, was arrested in the Gautam Nagar office, while Prateek Sharma was arrested in Laxmi Nagar.