UK alerts Bengaluru cops on visa fraud

The UK authorities have forwarded a petition to the Bengaluru Police against three City-based agents and eight persons for producing fake documents and counterfeit immigration stamps.

The Central Crime Branch (CCB) is holding a preliminary enquiry into the petition that was forwarded to the City Police some time ago.

The scam was uncovered by the UK authorities after eight applicants from Bengaluru applied for visas using passports with fake immigration stamps.

According to the UK Deputy High Commission in Chennai, the applicants were advised by the agents to get fake immigration stamps on the passports to claim that they had travelled widely only to hide their past violations of the UK visas.

The Immigration Enforcement Team retained the passports and conducted further checks.
Meanwhile, a loophole in the police verification system has also surfaced.

Even as the UK visa officers were enquiring into the issue, the applicants filed a “passport missing” complaints in Bengaluru and applied for a fresh passport.

Just then, the Deputy High Commission alerted Regional Passport Office here about the fake visa case. The RPO revoked the passports and passed on all the details to the CCB.

“What is more concerning is the fact that these applicants had cleared the police verification despite the fact that they claimed to have lost their passports. An extensive police verification should have been done in such cases. We are waiting for the police to establish the full facts of the case and take action against those found guilty,” Regional Passport Officer P S Karthigeyan told Deccan Herald.

DCP (Crime-CCB) K N Jithendranath said preliminary enquiry on the petition is under progress.

“We had received the petition some time ago. However, we don’t have passports retained by the Deputy High Commission. The enquiry is also going on to find out the process of police verification when the applicants filed for fresh passports,” he said.

More checks
On the other hand, the Deputy High Commission stated that the Immigration Enforcement Team has done a number of checks on such agents and all relevant intelligence was passed on to the CCB.  Samuel Darling, Regional Manager for the UK’s Immigration Enforcement Risk and Liaison Overseas Network said: “The UK government takes visa fraud very seriously and those who are found guilty of it are not only refused a visa, their passport could be revoked, they could face 10 year travel ban from not only the UK but from other countries, including the US and Australia, and they could also face a criminal investigation.”