Two Gujarat couple arrested for forging passports to immigrate to Canada

A preliminary probe by the police revealed that another couple was trying to fly abroad using suspicious documents.

Mumbai: The immigration department of the Special Branch-2 of Mumbai police has arrested two Gujarat-based couples for allegedly using bogus passports and duplicate seals of immigration authorities of various countries to fraudulently secure Canadian visas. The quartet was apprehended at the city airport during their attempt to fly to Amsterdam.

The four had plans to travel to Amsterdam on the morning of June 25, but police found in their possession a work permit visa from Trinidad, a country in the Caribbean. (Representative image)

The four passengers are identified as Nikulkumar Patel (32), Amitaben Nikulkumar Patel (23) from Mehsana, and Ravi Patel (24) and Janvee Ravi Patel (22), from Gandhinagar.

Constable Siddharth Jadhav, posted at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) first raised suspicion about some illegal act by the passengers Nikulkumar and Amitaben when the two failed to give satisfactory answers to his queries about the country they are travelling to and the purpose behind the foreign travel in the wee hours of Saturday.

A preliminary probe by the police revealed that another couple was trying to fly abroad using suspicious documents. The other couple, Ravi and Janvee, had managed to get through the immigration check and were waiting at the boarding gate when immigration officers took them to their office for questioning.

The four had plans to travel to Amsterdam on the morning of June 25, but police found in their possession a work permit visa from Trinidad, a country in the Caribbean. Police officials said when the officers checked their passports carefully, they found bogus and duplicate stamps of departure and arrival of various countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, UAE etc.

On verifying the credentials of their passports, it was revealed that Amitaben’s passport was allegedly forged and bogus. Her passport had a serial number which belonged to a person Abhilash Sharma from Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, said a police officer.

Sustained interrogation of the four revealed that K C Patel, one agent from Mehsana city, had organised everything for their illegal migration to Canada after the couples approached the agent with their desire to shift to Canada.

“The agent had made a bogus passport for Amitaben as she did not have one. The agent also made back-dated duplicate arrival/departure entries on their passports as an acknowledgement of their travelling to Singapore, Malaysia, UAE etc. By this method Canadian visa was illegally obtained for the four passengers,” said an immigration officer in the FIR, of which HT has reviewed a copy.

“Three of them pretended that their old passports were in very bad shape and claimed to have obtained new passports. They planned to travel from Mumbai to Amsterdam and then to Trinidad. The four had work permit visas of Trinidad. But in reality, their plan was not to go to Trinidad, but to go to Canada from Amsterdam,” the FIR added.

“The couples were produced before a metropolitan magistrate court on Monday and remanded to judicial custody. The investigation is going on,” said Sanjay Govilkar, senior inspector of Sahar police station.