THE MUMBAI crime branch on Wednesday arrested an agent who allegedly tampered with the passport of a UK visa applicant in order to “improve his chances of getting a UK visa”. The forgery was, however, detected by the immigration liaison manager and an application was handed over to the Mumbai Police to investigate the matter. So far, the police have arrested one agent and have found that there was another case registered against him in the past.
An officer said that the crime branch arrested one Ejaz Hussain Shaikh alias Ajju (49), a Santacruz resident, in connection with the forgery. A senior officer said, “A UK visa aspirant had handed over his passport to Shaikh to help him with getting a visa for the UK. Shaikh told him that if they show that he has visited other counties on the passport, his chances of getting a UK visa will improve. Accordingly, the agent tampered with the passport and made entries showing stamps of him leaving and entering the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA). The passport was then forwarded to the UK embassy to apply for a visa.”
At the embassy, the immigration liaison manager, who was processing the request, found something suspicious about the passport. After checking, he detected that several entry and exit stamps on the passport were fake. After confirming that the stamps were forged, the officials called the applicant. Realising that it was an offence, the matter was then handed over to the Mumbai Police.
The crime branch was asked to probe the matter. When the police questioned the applicant, he confirmed that some stamps on the passport were forged. “The applicant told us that the agent had suggested that they forge stamps on the passport which would improve their chances of getting a visa. He said that it was the agent who had forged the stamps on the passport,” the officer said. The police then started looking for the agent and eventually arrested Shaikh on Wednesday.
The police have charged Shaikh under sections 420 (cheating), 465 (punishment for forgery), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The police produced Shaikh before a court and he was remanded in police custody till August 7. An officer linked to the probe added, “There is another passport where forgery was detected. We have got the name of the agent who had forged the stamps. We are investigating if the two cases are linked.”
