Two people held for running visa racket

NEW DELHI - Two men were arrested here Friday on charges of obtaining a visa on forged documents and sending Indians to Italy, police said.

The Special Operations Squad (SOS), Crime Branch of Delhi Police arrested Gurdeep Singh Phial, 41, and Mukesh Luthra, 34. They were accused of illegal manpower trafficking to Italy and other European countries on the basis of Schengen visas.

A Schengen visa is a tourist visa that enables one to travel to any of the 15 European Union member countries with only one visa.

“Acting on the basis of a specific intelligence inputs, Delhi Police laid a trap near Rajdoot Hotel, Jangpura at about 11.15 a.m. Friday. Both the accused were nabbed and 12 Indian passports including one fake Indian passport, immigration stamps, visa, Rs.20,000 in cash, fake stamp and two cars were recovered from them,” said a senior police official.

During interrogation both accepted their role in sending people to Europe illegally and charging Rs.5-6 lakh from each. They also admitted to having a racket operating across India. The gang has so far sent around 100 people to European countries.

“The gang kept changing their modus operandi and at the moment were preparing the forged documents on the basis of family reunion. Schengen visas through family reunion are accepted easily since they are hard to forge, but they got around that difficulty also,” the police official told IANS.