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Gujarat illegal immigration scam mastermind held in gambling case
The police began hunting for human traffickers after the Canadian police found a Gujarati family frozen to death on the Canada border while crossing into the US on January 19
The Gujarat police have arrested the mastermind in the illegal immigration scam, Bobby alias Bharat Patel, who is believed to have arranged the infiltration of the Dingucha family, which froze to death on the Canada border while crossing into the US, police said on Tuesday.
Patel’s arrest from Ahmedabad by the Gujarat police’s State Monitoring Cell (SMC) on December 14, was in connection with a gambling raid in July last year that was being run in Ahmedabad under the garb of a charitable trust.
“Bharat Patel was wanted in the Manpasand Gymkhana gambling case that was raided last year. We caught him recently and found that he is also an accused in another case of fake passport in Ahmedabad. The investigation is on and police have recovered about 94 passports of different individuals from Patel, many of which are fake,” said Nirja Gotru, additional director general of police (ADGP), SMC.
SMC is formed to curb gambling and liquor trade in the state and Patel is allegedly one of the owners of the Manpasand Gymkhana.
An illegal immigration scam came to light in January this year following the ‘Dingucha’ tragedy. Dingucha is the name of the village, about forty kilometers away from Ahmedabad and in Gandhinagar district, to which the family belonged.
The incident that occurred in January this year showed how the pursuit for better opportunities has been driving residents of this village to developed countries, even by taking the illegal route by endangering their lives.
According to a police official, the two main conspirators behind the human trafficking racket are Patel and Charanjit Singh. While Patel hails from a village in Mehsana, Charanjit Singh, who hails from Jalandhar is likely to have escaped to the US, the official said. Patel used to do odd jobs in Dingucha before he connected with human traffickers in different parts of India.
The 47-year-old himself has over two dozen passports in his name, some even containing his biometric information, said people familiar with the matter. “He made small changes and has managed to get multiple passports from different passport offices.
During the investigation by the Gujarat police in Dingucha and other nearby villages, the names of Bobby Patel and Charanjit Singh prominently figured in sending illegal immigrants from Gujarat to the US.
“He is involved in illegal human trafficking and has cases against him in Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi. A case was registered against him in Ahmedabad city for preparing a bogus passport,” the Gujarat police said in a statement on December 14.
Charanjit Singh was based out of Delhi and ran a similar racket in other states. He had Patel as his associate for Gujarat, the people said.
Patel extorted money anywhere between ₹70 lakh to ₹1 crore from the aspiring illegal immigrants and used a two-step approach for sending more than 200 people to Europe and US using Mexico and other routes, the people added.
Patel initially went to the US in 1997 illegally and was caught in a year or so and even served jail term. Thereafter, he started using fake passports and started the human trafficking business.
Charanjit Singh, who owns a bungalow in Delhi and is a US citizen, runs motels in the US and has connections in Nigeria, Turkey, Mexico and Canada.
Using their contacts, Patel and Singh would establish that the illegal immigrants were in the foreign country only as tourists and then help them cross the border from Mexico or Canada and into the US, said police officials familiar with the matter.
The Gujarat police and state agencies began hunting for human traffickers after the Canadian police found Jagdish Patel, 35, his wife Vaishali, 33, and their children Vihanga, 12, and Dharmik, 3, frozen to death in an empty field on January 19.
