Two nabbed for selling fake travel forms to migrants

Delhi Police have arrested two people who allegedly duped migrants by selling them fake forms that they said will help facilitate their travel to their home states

Delhi Police have arrested two people who allegedly duped migrants by selling them fake forms that they said will help facilitate their travel to their home states during the lockdown.

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Police officers on Wednesday made it clear that the government has not yet formulated any guidelines with regards to sending stranded migrant workers back to their hometowns and anyone claiming otherwise was not to be believed.

The interrogation of the arretsed suspects so far has led the police to some WhatsApp groups on which fake forms were being circulated with the intention of duping poor migrant workers desperate to return to their homes.

On Tuesday, a 38-year-old owner of a photocopying shop in outer Delhi’s Punjabi Colony near Narela was arrested for allegedly duping migrant workers by selling them fake forms, which he claimed would help them travel during the lockdown.

Deputy commissioner of police (outer-north) Gaurav Sharma said that the shopkeeper, identified as Rajeev, was selling photocopies of the fake form to migrants living in Punjabi Colony at R20 each.

“Rajeev was misleading them by asking them to deposit the filled forms at the police station. However, no such forms were issued by the Delhi police,” said DCP Sharma, adding that 25 copies of the fake form were seized from the shop. Rajeev admitted to having sold 20 such forms before his arrest.

The shopkeeper was interrogated to know the source of the forms. He showed the police a WhatsApp group of which he was a member. Investigators said that they have approached the network service provider and sought details of the person who posted the fake form on the group.

A similar arrest was made on May 1 in east Delhi’s Gandhi Nagar. The local police had received information that fake forms were being sold at a photocopying shop in Ajit Nagar area. The shop was raided and its owner, Mujahir Alam, was arrested. Alam told the police that he was only photocopying the form provided to him by some unknown migrant workers. In that case, as well, the police found that the fake form was being circulated on social media and various WhatsApp groups.

“We hear migrants living in shelter homes often talking about such forms and the offers they get from outsiders that their travel back home can be arranged if they paid money. But we regularly warn them that such people are fraudsters and tell them that the government is preparing a list of people who want to return to their home states,” said Sujit, a member of Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses (SPYM), an NGO which manages several shelter homes in the city.

In many of the recent meetings with a senior police officer, the Delhi Police Commissioner SN Shrivastava have asked them to keep a vigil on such fraudsters and rumour mongers, apart from updating migrants about the steps, the government is taking for their migration to home states.