Dingucha glare lands 12 Gujarat smugglers in Delhi Police net

AHMEDABAD: The discovery of frozen bodies of four of a family from Dingucha in Gandhinagar near the Canadian border in January put under scanner the nationwide network of agents running illegal immigration rackets and twisted methods they employ to help migrants cross into the US illegally. In almost a year since the tragedy, Delhi police have booked 12 Gujarati human smugglers in at least 20 cases of illegal immigration involving 40 travellers.
According to Delhi police, number of human smuggling cases filed with them has doubled in the past three years. In 2019, IGI airport police filed eight FIRs and booked 10 accused, which rose to 20 FIRs and 40 accused in 2022.
According to documents obtained from Delhi police, IGI airport police arrested seven accused - six from Mehsana and one from Nadiad - in human smuggling cases in 2021. All these agents were booked for cheating, forgery, and producing forged documents as genuine and under sections of the passport act.
In 2022, they arrested 12 agents, including three from Ahmedabad, two each from Gandhinagar, Valsad and Kheda, and one each from Patan, Jamnagar and Valsad.
Sources in the Delhi police said a human smuggler from Patan, Manish alias Ketan Patel, was booked in four different cases for forging passports and visas to send people to the US illegally. Another human smuggler, Dushyant Brahmbbhatt from Kheda, was charged in three separate cases.
Despite the vast media attention and a high-profile police investigation, the deaths of Jagdish Patel, 35, his wife Vaishali,33, and their kids Vihangi, 12, and Dharmik, 3, on January 19, 2022, did little to deter Gujaratis with dreams of settling overseas.
According to information received from state and central agencies probing illegal immigration rackets in Gujarat, unconfirmed reports peg that about 4,900 people from Mehsana, Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad districts have embarked on illegal journeys to the US after the Dingucha tragedy.
An officer close to the investigation said, "A family pays anywhere between Rs 75 lakh to Rs 1 crore to human smugglers. The money covers everything from flight tickets, food, and stay to sim cards.
The agents usually send people illegally to the US through Canada or the Turkey-Mexico routes.
They might also send the clients on a shorter trip to Dubai, Singapore, or Malaysia to collect passport stamps to show that these were people with the desire and means to travel the world." Delhi police sources said they have various teams camping in Gujarat to track and capture human smugglers. On the other hand, the Gujarat police have arrested only three agents so far.
While the Ahmedabad city crime branch arrested two people, the state monitoring cell arrested one person following the Dingucha case. The CID (crime) began an inquiry into the Dingucha case last January.