Airport impostor: Agent who helped 24-year-old pretend as 67-year-old man arrested
Police said the 24-year-old man and his wife, from Lucknow, wanted to settle in the US and approached an agent, named Jagjeet Singh alias Jaggi, who promised to get them to the US for a fee of ₹60 lakh
New Delhi
Forty-eight days after a 24-year-old man was caught impersonating a senior citizen by dyeing his hair and beard white blonde and using a wheelchair at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, Delhi Police’s airport unit on Tuesday said they arrested an agent of the human trafficking racket that provided the man with the passport of a 67-year-old man and helped him get a makeover.
Police said that besides the 24-year-old man, Guru Sewak Singh, his wife Archana Singh, 21, and another client of the racket also tried to travel to the United States via Canada using the passports of others. The three of them were pretending to be a family, but when the 24-year-old man was caught, the other two fled. Archana was caught later.
Interrogation of the agent, 24-year-old Gurmukh Singh, a resident of Rudrapur in Uttarakhand, revealed that the passports were of Rashvinder Singh Sahota,67, Harjot Kaur, who is in her early 60s, and Balwant Singh, 19, deputy commissioner of police (IGI Airport) Usha Rangani said.
“We located Sahota and Harjot... They told us that they gave their passports to Gurmukh and his associates to get visa for their journey to different countries. They had also paid the agent. However, Gurmukh and his associates handed over the passports to the couple and the third client and the three clients were supposed to courier back the passports to the racketeers once they reached their destinations,” DCP Rangani said.
On June 18, Guru Sewak was caught at the immigration counter as his voice did not match his age and his skin did not have wrinkles, despite claiming to be 67 years old. He was then arrested under charges of impersonation, cheating and forgery was registered and he was arrested.
Probe revealed that he got the makeover at a salon in Tilak Nagar, police said. He paid the salon owner ₹2,000 to get his hair and beard dyed white.
“We served a notice to the salon owner after which she joined the probe. The woman was questioned to ascertain if she was linked to the human trafficking gang. She said that Sewak visited her salon and told her that he tried bleaching his hair but it did not turn out the way he wanted. One of the salon staffers bleached his hair and beard in the colour he wanted,” Rangnani said.
Police said Archana was arrested on Sewak’s instance, but they could not ascertain if she also got a makeover. They said the couple, from Lucknow, wanted to settle in the US and approached an agent, named Jagjeet Singh alias Jaggi, who promised to get them to the US for a fee of ₹60 lakh. The couple paid half in advance, they said.
“Jaggi, a 32-year-old resident of Pilibhit in UP, was arrested from Rudrapur and his interrogation has now led to the arrest of Gurmukh from Uttarakhand. Gurmukh ran a visa consultancy firm in Rudrapur and cheated people on the pretext of sending them abroad. We are now trying to arrest other members of the racket,” DCP Rangnani said.