Sunday, April 1, 2018

Police bust fake visa racket, nab two, seize 65 passports

TIMES NEWS NETWORK   31.03.2018

Chennai: The Vepery police busted a fake visa racket by arresting two people, including a woman, on Friday. Police seized 65 passports, fake visas of countries, including Canada and the UK, and other documents such as income tax returns, Aadhaar cards and voter identity cards.

Police said John Xavier, 34, a native of Sivaganga, was operating the racket out of an office on Naval Hospital Road, just a few metres from the Chennai police commissioner’s office. A police team first arrested Xavier and later picked up his assistant Venkateswari, 32, from a hotel. Police have also launched a hunt for four more accomplices in the scam.

Xavier has been operating in the city for more than a year as some of the documents date back to 2017, said an investigating officer. “We suspect that his clients submitted original passports to procure fake visas and travel abroad,” the officer said. Police are verifying whether the other documents seized are original.

Following the seizure, sleuths from the Q branch conducted inquiries with the arrested duo. Preliminary interrogations revealed that they charged up to ₹1lakh for each fake visa.

Venkateswari, a BSc graduate in information technology, had been employed by Xavier since 2013, a senior police officer said, adding that she first approached him to obtain a fake passport and later started working for him.

Further investigations are on to find out how many people availed of fake visas from Xavier to travel abroad. Police have gathered a list of people who approached him for this purpose and are likely to question them.

In July 2017, police had arrested a head constable attached to the intelligence wing of the Chennai city police and a postman in a fake passport scam.

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