In a major operation, officers of the Central Crime Branch (CCB) on Saturday busted a racket involving travel agencies preparing forged documents to obtain visas from embassies in New Delhi, and arrested 13 people, including key suspects.
“The accused could be part of a visa racket active all over the country, which may have serious ramifications. It indicates that a full-fledged organised gang is involved, operating from Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi,” a senior CCB official said.
France and Greece
Following intelligence inputs, CCB offices raided six travel agency offices in the city and managed to arrest 13 people including key suspects — John Prabakar of Mylapore, Sujith of Dwarka in New Delhi, Himanshu Mewari of Nainital. The police seized 150 passports, laptops, ₹18 lakh in cash, fake bank statements, income tax papers and rubber stamps.
The 13 suspects were found to be involved in facilitating acquisition of French and Greek visas on the basis of fake documents. The gang was charging up to ₹5 lakh from successful applicants and ₹20,000 as facilitation fee. They were also involved in preparing fake bank statements, authority letters and work experience letters.
John Prabakar works with the Indo-Poland Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Tamil Nadu. He was nabbed for a similar offence earlier but was let off. Sujith too was arrested earlier by Delhi police on similar charges.