Hyderabad: As many 51 air passengers including 48 women were arrested in a span of one week at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Shamshabad while travelling with forged visas. The women were lured by agents with a promise of job opportunities in the Gulf countries, especially Kuwait.
On Wednesday, 20 women hailing from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, were arrested for trying to use forged visas to fly to Gulf countries.
Shamshabad inspector G. Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy said “As many as twenty women were arrested on Wednesday after they were found in possession of forged visit visas. A few of them have already worked abroad for two to three years and wanted to work there again.”
With the alarming number of women arrested in the forged visa cases, the Cyberabad police are doing all that they can to identify the agents who are providing the forged visas. Some agents stay outside the country and are sending the visas via post, which is making it hard for the police to identify them.
On March 7, one female passenger from AP who wanted to fly to Kuwait via Abu Dhabi in an Etihad Airways flight was caught by immigration officials when they discovered that the woman was carrying a photocopy of the visit visa. On further questioning, it was found that an agent had given the work visa to the woman and asked her to conceal it and show the photocopy of the visit visa as she does not have a clearance from the Protector of Emigrants (POE). She was booked under sections 420, 468 and 471 of the IPC and arrested.
About half-an-hour later, 11 women — nine from AP and two from Telangana — were caught by the immigration officials in a similar offence. They were leaving for Kuwait by a Gulf Air flight. The women were given forged visit visas despite having original work visas. However, they did not have POE clearance.
On March 10, seven women from AP who were leaving to Kuwait in an Al Jazeera flight were caught for a similar offence and were arrested. Minutes later, three more male passengers from Karnataka who were leaving for Qatar were held.
Cyberabad Police Commissionerate officials said, “In some cases, the passengers were unaware of the fraud committed by the agents. But in the other cases, the passengers were well aware that they needed POE clearance and were trying to evade that by carrying photocopies of forged visit visas made out of the original work visa.”
