Gujarat: With 28 passports, human smuggler flies under radar

AHMEDABAD: Bharat Patel alias Bobby Patel, one of the most notorious illegal immigration agents from Gujarat, has a good 28 passports! What’s more shocking is that, according to investigators probing human smuggling rings here, all 28 of them – some even containing his biometric information – were legally issued to Bharat alias Bobby Patel.
The Dingucha resident, who started off doing odd jobs in the village, is now under scanner for running a major migrant smuggling racket that spreads from India to the US through Turkey and Mexico.
An officer from the Gujarat police, privy to the development, said, “Bharat changed minor details and got multiple passports issued at different times through passport offices in the western parts of the country including Mumbai and Ahmedabad.”
TOI learnt that the 47-year-old’s first passport was issued by the Ahmedabad regional passport office in 1997.
“It contained his original name, date of birth, and address. He visited the US twice that year to expand his illegal immigration ring. The second time he went, he smuggled in two young children but got caught. He was booked for human smuggling and under provisions of the Alien Act. A US court banned him from entering the country for 99 years and deported him to India,” the officer revealed, adding: “In 2002, he got another passport. Since travelling on just one passport might have proved problematic, he kept getting new passports by changing a couple of details like the name, the surname, date of birth or address.”
The police officer said that he got a passport issued in the name of Kamal Shah from Mumbai in 2004. The date of birth in the passport was changed too, the cop added. The officer told TOI that Bharat obtained seven passports from Ahmedabad and Mumbai passport offices.
“He got 21 more passports from other parts of the country. In all the passports, his photograph was the same. In the past four years, he made four new passports in which his fingerprints and other biometric details including his retinal impressions were taken. Using these passports, he has been travelling in and out of the country and the authorities have no clue. We found this information through immigration officials while investigating the migrant smuggling rings,” the officer said. In the meantime, his parents, wife and two children settled in the US and became American citizens.
The police said that his accomplices, Yogesh Sathwara, Bhrugesh Patel, and Rajesh Patel also have 5-10 passports.
The ‘Dingucha kingpin’ is not only suspected of having sent four of a Patel family from the Gandhinagar village who froze to death near the Canadian border in January on their illegal journey to the US, but also of having helped 1,500 people from North Gujarat obtain fake passports.
“We also suspect Bharat Patel of having sent six people from North Gujarat to the US recently. However, their boat capsized while crossing the St Regis river on the Canada-US border. The US border and customs police fortunately along with other agencies rescued the illegal immigrants. They will now be facing a legal case in the US,” said a senior police officer.
The Gujarat police and state agencies began cracking down on human smuggling rackets after Canadian police found Jagdish Patel, 35, his wife, Vaishali, 33, and their children Vihanga, 12, and Dharmik, 3, frozen to death in an empty field on January 19.
They had died just 12 metres from the US border. Their deaths renewed the focus on smugglers and the life-threatening methods they employ to help migrants cross into the US illegally. Since then, the police have busted eight such agents, and several more are under the scanner.